Today, the Dow closed at 8,579.19 -- down 39.4% from its one year old peak. For some perspective on the magnitude of the current decline, today's chart illustrates how the Dow performed during the first year of all major corrections since 1900. As today's chart illustrates, the first year of the current correction has been more severe than the first year of any correction since 1900 -- and that includes the correction that began in 1929.

The Winners of the New World

Jim Cramer

02/29/00 - 09:42 AM EST

Editor's Note: James J. Cramer is the keynote speaker at the 6th Annual Internet and Electronic Commerce Conference and Exposition, held today at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City. We're running the full text of that speech here.

You want winners? You want me to put my Cramer Berkowitz hedge fund hat on and just discuss what my fund is buying today to try to make money tomorrow and the next day and the next? You want my top 10 stocks for who is going to make it in the New World? You know what? I am going to give them to you. Right here. Right now.

OK. Here goes. Write them down -- no handouts here!: 724 Solutions (SVNX Quote - Cramer on SVNX - Stock Picks), Ariba (ARBA Quote - Cramer on ARBA - Stock Picks), Digital Island (ISLD Quote - Cramer on ISLD - Stock Picks), Exodus (EXDS Quote - Cramer on EXDS - Stock Picks), InfoSpace.com (INSP Quote - Cramer on INSP - Stock Picks), Inktomi (INKT Quote - Cramer on INKT - Stock Picks), Mercury Interactive (MERQ Quote - Cramer on MERQ - Stock Picks), Sonera (SNRA Quote - Cramer on SNRA - Stock Picks), VeriSign (VRSN Quote - Cramer on VRSN - Stock Picks) and Veritas Software (VRTS Quote - Cramer on VRTS - Stock Picks).

We are buying some of every one of these this morning as I give this speech. We buy them every day, particularly if they are down, which, no surprise given what they do, is very rare. And we will keep doing so until this period is over -- and it is very far from ending. Heck, people are just learning these stories on Wall Street, and the more they come to learn, the more they love and own! Most of these companies don't even have earnings per share, so we won't have to be constrained by that methodology for quarters to come.

There, now that that's done with, can we talk about the methodology that produced those top 10 so that you can understand how, in a universe of a gazillion stocks, we arrived at those, so you too can figure it out? I hope we can because I have another 10 and still another 10 and another. They all do the same thing: They make the Web faster, cheaper, better and easier to access anywhere, anytime. They allow you to get on the Web securely anywhere in the world. They make the Web economy the only economy that matters. That's all they do.

We try to own every one of them. Every single one. And if I had my druthers, I wouldn't own any other stocks in the year 2000. Because these are the only ones worth owning right now in this extremely difficult, extremely narrow stock market. They are the only ones that are going higher consistently in good days and bad. I love every one of them, just as I loathe the rest of the stock universe.

Does anyone remember Jim Cramer's infamous rant on February 29th of 2000, in which he listed 10 stocks "you must buy today for his 'New World'"? They were SNVX, ARBA, ISLD, EXDS, INSP, INKT, MERQ, SNRA, VRSN and VRTS.

Of those SNVX, ISLD, EXDS, INKT, SNRA and VRTS are no longer are listed under their original ticker symbols. Some were outright business failures, others were bought or merged in the collapse that followed - just a couple of months after Cramer's "buy buy buy" call.

Of the "survivors", ARBA traded for $800 back then. It now trades for $11. INSP traded for $1150. It now trades for $18.90. MERQ traded for about $90; it now is $51 (and has the ignobility of being the "best of the bad" on a total return basis!) VRSN traded for $238; it now sells for $37.88.

If you listened to Jim on 2/29/2000, you lost more than 90% of your money.

NINETY PERCENT!

Also, more succinctly:
Quote:
Cramer's FAMOUS call in the early months of 2000 still stands as the crown jewel of pure folly in listening to these people - if you believed him THEN you lost basically ALL of your money!

How does an asshole like this who literally bankrupted people back in the 2000 "tech wreck" get his own TV show? How does he sell ANY books? How is it that his FAMOUS calls over the last few months - CROX anyone - aren't enough all on their own to lead people to show up at his studio with pitchforks and torches?

Its obvious that in this "ADD World" there really are a lot of STUPID people out there, otherwise people like Kudlow and Cramer would have no audience and would be off the air!

Are you one of them?