Sneak Preview: Win Like the Pros

Editor's note: This is a special sneak preview of Jim Cramer's just-released book, Jim Cramer's Stay Mad for Life: Get Rich, Stay Rich (Make Your Kids Even Richer). Look for more sneak previews every day, and get your free copy with your annual subscription to Action Alerts PLUS; click here for details. Catch Cramer in person at his last book signing event: Saturday, Jan. 12, at 1 p.m. in Westbury, Long Island's Costco.

Missed the first sneak previews? Read the book intro and the rules of getting and staying rich: Rule 1, Rule 2, Rule 3, Rule 4 and Rule 5. Know what pros do right and amateurs do wrong: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5. Learn the five mini-bull markets that will stampede for years, starting with aerospace and defense, agriculture, oil and oil service, minerals and mining and infrastructure.

What the Pros Do Right and the Amateurs Do Wrong

Not long ago my good friend James Altucher started the first social networking stock site. It's a terrific place, Stockpickr.com, where professionals and amateurs gather every day to noodle on what to do next and what is happening in the market.

It is also a great place to learn. But not just for home gamers anxious to pick up experience and lessons; for people like me too. Every day when I go into the "Answers" section of the site, I see questions addressed to me that show the tremendous gulf between amateurs and professionals, a gulf so great that, unless I do my best to help ameliorate it, will simply grow wider and wider, with beginners losing money repeatedly and even seasoned investors getting blown out because they don't understand what is happening and they don't know how to put aside their amateurish acts because they've never been taught by the pros.

I have been a pro for three decades, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a continuing education course from the moment I got to Goldman Sachs(GS) to the moment I went on my own to start one of the first hedge funds. I never thought I would say that, but in retrospect it was a pretty gutsy thing to leave the friendly confines of Goldman to strike out on my own. It worked, but being a professional was something that didn't come second nature to me and won't to you either. So what can we do? After culling all the differences between what I see amateurs do routinely on Stockpickr.com and what I have been taught to do, I thought it might be a good idea to bridge the gulf right here and now by showing you the distances between us on a list of ten divides, and then giving you the tools to close them yourself.