Cramer: Retirement Nears

N E W   Y O R K, Dec. 4 -- — No one can believe it, which tells me it is even more right than I thought. Yep, I am getting out of the hedge fund game. I am retiring from Cramer Berkowitz at the end of the year and turning this great firm over to my trusted partner, Jeff Berkowitz.

Rather than have you speculate on the real skinny, I am going to share with you what I am sharing with my partners at my hedge fund.

To Be With Their Daddy

“Dear Partner: “When I started this firm 14 years ago, I always dreamed that we would build a team that could last far after I decided I no longer wanted to run money. We now have that team and it is time for me to step aside and let the younger, hungrier players, especially my terrific partner for the last decade, Jeff Berkowitz, take over.

“It’s been almost 20 years since I started running managing money for individuals, and I have regarded it as a terrific daily challenge that has consumed about as much of me as I think I can allow it before I become too tired and spent to do other things.

“But after a great run, I long for other challenges that, at this point in my life, seem more compelling to me: family, my writing and, yes, for those of who know me best, fun. Plain unadulterated fun. Fun with my wife. Fun with my beautiful daughters, before they are too old to want to be with their daddy.

‘So Manic and Miserable’“Recently a respected Washington Post writer, Howard Kurtz, penned a book, called The Fortune Tellers, about me and a few other people who