The Cramer Diaries, Part I: Early Bird Gets Worm

(What's it like to be a trader with James J. Cramer's horrendous schedule? We asked Cramer to give us a diary of a trading day. He chose Friday, April 3, and we will run out his diary during the next five days, culminating with a Saturday special. We hope you enjoy this series. If you have comments, please send them to [e-mail].)

****

People seem pretty fascinated by my day, for some reason, so I have decided to give you a minute-by-minute account of a particular day, Friday, April 3, the day the Dow pierced the 9000 level, ever so briefly.

The day starts at 4:15 a.m., a half-hour later than usual because I was out till 11:30 p.m. the night before at the New York magazine 30th birthday party. I have long since learned that I can't have more than one drink at a weekday party, which I abhor going to anyway, without botching the entire next day.

I wake up soundlessly, without an alarm, because my wife won't be getting up for another couple of hours. Heck, nobody in her right mind should get up as early as I do. I get dressed without a peep, carefully picking out a blue shirt and my buy (green) and sell (red) cufflinks that I got at Simon Carter in London. The sell goes on the left, the buy the right, because I have made money when I did it that way and I am as superstitious as the next trader. First tie, a red Ferragamo, keeps knotting terribly. Switch to a pink. Pink's a winner. Put my watch on. Start the clock, I think to myself, noting how much my day seems like the day of that Roy Scheider character in All That Jazz. "It's show time." I've got some song in my head from my daughter's drive-around tape, Cotton-Eyed Joe, yeah, the same one they sing in the sixth at Yankee Stadium, and I can't get it out of my head, Seinfeld-like. But I don't sing it, because I will be horribly off key and wake my sleeping wife. "If it hadn't been for cotton-eyed Joe..."

I run up the stairs to the office and download my email on to my Dell Latitude Xpi CD, which I love. There are over 80 in my Netscape Pop box alone, as I did not get to check my box since 6 p.m. the night before. The vast majority are from people I don't know, so I have to take the time out to answer or set them straight that I am not their broker.

I can't respond to more than 15 because of how long it took to download, and then I pack up and go downstairs. It's 4:40 a.m. and I am really running behind my regular schedule. I dash out to get the Journal, ah hah big GTE restructuring, 100,000 shares for the good guys, gonna start out a nice day, I read it as I mindlessly grind A&P 8 O'Clock coffee for my wife, who has set the timer of the Krupps for 6:15. I pour it in, noting that last week I, rather absentmindedly, forgot to put the water in, and caused massive disappointment. I check my daughter's homework, left on the table for me to see, and I take the trash out, which is particularly nasty today because of the darn three cats that do their business inside.

Kyle, my driver, is out front, waiting for me to finish my chores. Yes, I allow myself a driver, so I can write these pieces on the way to work and get all sorts of stuff done as I make my way the 14.5 miles to my downtown office. I sling my PC and a change of clothes -- I won't need it -- and my workbag over my back, jaunt down seven stairs and jump in the car, with the same "good morning Kyle" that I have said every workday, save two vacations, for the past four years.

Once in, I scan both Journals, the one that was delivered and the one that Kyle brings to me that is a later edition, to see if those wacky guys at 200 Liberty found out anything new between editions. Of course, like the Journal in the house, I start in section two, because that's where they put the news that breaks after I leave the office. Pretty funny that all of the breaking stuff is buried on page B5. But that's dead-tree logic for you. Paper has nothing interesting in it, and does not even include the incredibly bullish comments from Greenspan the day before. What a miss. Greenspan buried irrational exuberance but the Journal chose to ignore it. Oh well.

The Times doesn't seem to do much better. I scan the Digital Diaper article and then I settle down to read the Barbara Doran piece. I knew Doran (see my earlier column) and had lost track of her. Geraldine Fabrikant did not, obviously, nor did the investors who she burned and no doubt gave her up to the Times. Wish there were more details, but so be it. Next.

I rip open the PC and proceed to write a Dow 9000 article, because that is what is expected of me and I don't want to disappoint. Six hundred words that you have read already, and I am midway through the Holland Tunnel. That piece went quick, giving me nine minutes to study my position sheets.

It's a furious survey of what I own, what I'm short, what's working, what's not. I try to absorb every detail as we sail out of the tunnel toward my Wall Street office. I have to be ready to talk these things over with my partner, Jeff Berkowitz, as soon as I see him.

(Wednesday: Part II, getting into the office to check what's happening around the globe.)