"She would later tell me that she was praying I wouldn't slam the monitor with the staple gun or overturn the whole desk. The last time I tossed the desk my system froze as I thought Intel was going up... First to go was the keyboard. Sometimes I would just smash it with a phone. This time I picked it up, turned it on its side, and gave it four good whacks with enough force to send the QWERTY keys to the left and ZXCVB keys to the right" Quotes from Confessions of a Street Addict. LOL
The point Jon makes is there are two markets, the institutions moving trillions of dollars and the long term investor putting money in a pension or 401k. It turns out these big banks and institutions (Bear, Lehman, AIG..) were gambling with levered up shareholders equity, went bust and brought EVERYONE down with them. I think for the game to be fair there needs to be more transperancy in the market. There was too much over-the-counter greed and abuse combined with hidden black box trading that made the VIX hit all time highs when the global financial system almost collapsed in Nov, 08. There was so much risk hidden in the system that even Dick Bove thought Lehman was worth $20/share a month before bankruptcy.
I wouldn't blame Jim Cramer for providing his stock ideas on TV everyday for people willing to risk their money. Maybe CNBC should've taken the game more seriously... I think Fast Money kind of filled that gap. Either way check out stocktwits for better real time interactive market commentary. These are uncensored videos via Comedy Central.
