He is currently CNBC's Mad Money host, director of TheStreet.com and host of the radio show Real Money with Jim Cramer syndicated by Westwood One/CBS Radio.

Jim Cramer grew up in the town of Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania, outside Philadelphia. He went to Springfield Township High School in Montgomery County. He learned the value of a dollar by selling ice cream at Veterans Stadium during Philadelphia Phillies games. Cramer graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1977 where he was an editor and the President of the Harvard Crimson. After college, he worked as a journalist at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. He went back to school to get a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School and, after graduating in 1984, went to work in Goldman Sachs' Sales & Trading department.

In 1987, he started his own hedge fund company, Cramer Berkowitz, working out of the offices of hedge fund pioneer Michael Steinhardt's Steinhardt, Fine, Berkowitz, Co. It was to be the beginning of a shrewd career on Wall Street where he purportedly achieved a 24% compounded return (after all fees) for the next 13 years. After a stellar 2000, Cramer's fund finished up the year +36%, compared to -11% for the S&P 500 and -6% for the Dow Industrials. But after the tech bubble burst, Cramer retired from the hedge fund business, turning the company over to his long-time partner, Jeff Berkowitz. While Cramer's success in producing high returns for his fund was unmistakeable, he began to concentrate on his passion for journalism.

He co-founded TheStreet.com and is the Markets Commentator and Advisor to the CEO, Thomas Clarke, Jr., and went on to work at CNBC, where he was a host on America Now and Kudlow & Cramer with Lawrence Kudlow. He now has a radio show called RealMoney Radio and his own television show focused on stocks, Mad Money with Jim Cramer. He exhibits his encyclopedic knowledge of equity securities during the Lightning Round segment on Mad Money where he quickly analyzes stocks suggested by callers. One of the popular catchphrases on Mad Money is "Booyah," which seems to have taken the form of a greeting as well as an enthusiastic celebration. Also popular is his ritual of throwing his chair across the studio before the Lightning Round, as well as throwing his book -- Jim Cramer's Real Money--Sane Investing in an Insane World -- whenever a caller mentions it on air. Thanks to his energetic rhetoric, his insightful analysis of stocks, and his off-the-wall antics, Mad Money has become CNBC's most popular show.

In 1988, Cramer married his wife, Karen Backfisch, whom he refers to as the "Trading Goddess." (Karen was a professional trader herself, and Jim claims that she earned the nickname before the two met.) Karen stopped trading full-time after the birth of their first child in July 1991. The couple recently separated. They have two daughters.

Having already made a fortune in the market, he now uses his show, book, and website to help the "common man" become wealthy. He eschews Wall Street orthodoxy, strongly promotes portfolio diversification (generally five stocks, believing that most individuals do not have time to research more than five,) and recommends that people devote 20% of their portfolio to pure speculation because, in the long run, that one "lottery ticket" stock will greatly outweigh the losses. He also strongly encourages viewers to do research before and after investing in stock selections; he is not a fan of the "Cramer bounce" (the phenomenon in after-hours trading where his stock selections suddenly increase in price solely on his recommendation) as he feels those listeners have not "done their homework."

Critics often use the nickname "The Weathervane" to describe Cramer, whose outlook will rapidly oscillate between bearish and bullish following the prevailing market sentiment.

A former employee of Cramer's named Nicholas Maier accused Cramer, in his book Trading with the Enemy, of front running stocks by feeding rumors about stocks he held to CNBC's Maria Bartiromo. Cramer and Bartiromo have denied the allegation.

He is also said to have exhibited a violent temper at his hedge fund, characterized by screaming at his employees and throwing telephones and computers when he was unhappy with his results. In his interview with 60 Minutes, Cramer admits to having had a problem with his temper, and after speaking with his dad (who said he would outlive Cramer if things continued as they were,) Cramer left the hedge fund business. Cramer's reputation as having an anger-management problem has helped him in creating Mad Money, though, as it moves away from typical CNBC programming.

Criticism of Jim Cramer has also expanded to the Internet. A number of websites have sprung up with the intention of tracking Cramer's recommendations. Some are merely blogs that vent frustrations against Cramer, his onscreen persona, and the stock picks made in the 'Lightning Round' of his CNBC show. Other sites go further and analyze Cramer's stock picks in some detail. Some of the more creative websites use complex programs to track and compare recommendations with the performance of the overall market. One such site, CramerWatch.org, actually pits Jim Cramer's recommendations against a monkey that makes buy or sell recommendations at random. The monkey does as well or better than Cramer.