Brokerage Industry Misses a Big Chance

People are hungry for ideas and they want to make money. They want to do it because they have no other alternatives and they are stuck trying to figure the darned stuff out.

That's my takeaway from spending the day with 1,000 investors from the New Jersey area who came out to the middle of nowhere to talk stocks with me.

After a period where real estate crushed stocks, the investors are recognizing that perhaps stocks have been overlooked, that there have to be some buys out there. However, their skepticism is so thick about the institutions that are there to help them that you hesitate to recommend anything but doing your homework and figuring it out yourself.

The people coming back to the market are so much wiser than the foolish marketers at the brokerage houses. To a person, when I asked people about the "tools" that the electronic brokers provide, there was derisive laughter. They know the truth: The old days, in which some tool told you what to do and you did it, led to the market debacles of 2000 and 2001. These people want advice, directional advice; they want to be told what to do and what can change to make it so they have to change with the times.

I bring up the contrast with the discount brokers because I find that so many of them don't want to take a stand, either because they don't know anything and are just marketers or because they know they will be wrong and they never want to be wrong.

I couldn't disagree more with their stance. People want honest picks, and when the picks are wrong, they want the pickers simply to admit their mistakes and try harder. They understand now that tools and graphs are meaningless gobbledygook, sops tossed to people in order to get their accounts. They believe the brokerage industry either stuffs them with bad stocks or gives them charts that mean nothing.

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James J. Cramer is a director and co-founder of TheStreet.com. He contributes daily market commentary for TheStreet.com's sites and serves as an adviser to the company's CEO. Outside contributing columnists for TheStreet.com and RealMoney.com, including Cramer, may, from time to time, write about stocks in which they have a position. In such cases, appropriate disclosure is made. To see his personal portfolio and find out what trades Cramer will make before he makes them, sign up for ActionAlertsPLUS by clicking here. While he cannot provide personalized investment advice or recommendations, he invites you to send comments on his column by clicking here. Listen to Cramer's RealMoney Radio show on your computer; just click here. Watch Cramer on "Mad Money" at 6 p.m. ET weeknights on CNBC. Click here to order Cramer's latest book, "Real Money: Sane Investing in an Insane World," click here to get his second book, "You Got Screwed!" and click here to order Cramer's autobiography, "Confessions of a Street Addict." Cramer appreciates your feedback and invites you to send him an email by clicking here.