Trading With the Enemy: Seduction and Betrayal on Jim Cramer’s Wall Street

In January of 1994, Nicholas W. Maier hopped on a train that took him from Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he lived with his parents, to New York’s Penn Station. With his wallet stuck in his sock, he headed down to the heart of the Wall Street district for a meeting with Jim Cramer that would change his life forever. For the next five years, Maier would work like a slave inside Jim Cramer’s hedge fund, a limited partnership that included only the wealthiest investors, where rules were scarce and where, in his glory days, Jim Cramer managed almost half a billion dollars, raking in phenomenal returns.
Entranced by the game, Maier quickly rose from the office assistant fetching sandwiches from the deli downstairs to a trader playing with a fifty-million-dollar portfolio. But under the pressure of Jim’s constant war, Maier’s adrenaline rush wore off, and the dark side of Wall Street was Maier had become exhausted and money driven – at his worst moments swapping tranquilizers with his coworkers and passing out on a New York subway.
This is a true insider’s story – an honest, raw, page-turning account that takes us on a journey through the volatile world of hedge funds. From Cramer & Company to the brokerage houses and analysts to the reporters who cover the market action, we are shown a Wall Street where almost everyone is dirty – a world where even the SEC fails to maintain order.