Jim Cramer's Pool

This column was originally published on Street Insight on Dec. 21 at 9:35 a.m. EST. It's being republished as a bonus for TheStreet.com and RealMoney.com readers. For more information about subscribing to Street Insight, please click here.

By next week, I will have completed five years on The Edge (six years if you include my RealMoolah gig). That's a long time.

I actually started out writing on TheStreet.com back in the late 1990s when I penned The Contrarian column. At that time, the site was a new concept and a real-time experiment that struggled in its infancy, but it began to flourish even as the economy suffered in 2001.

Since I started writing on a consistent basis six years ago, we have not only dealt with the market's ups and downs, but we have shared some of life's experiences together -- through visits, emails, telephone conversations and other personal correspondences. Happily, over the last six years, I have met numerous new friends (virtually and in person) from my experience as a member of TheStreet.com community. ...