Me & My Money: Off the Charts

Doing his yoga, perhaps, or plucking out acoustic arrangements for a future version of MTV's "Unplugged" series? Hardly. Ramone is glued to CNBC — "Squawk Box," in particular — watching the stock market.

"Shows like that used to be stodgy," Ramone says in his native Queens accent, which occasionally and inexplicably dips into a Herman's Hermits British lilt. "But here they mix business with having a good time. They know what they're talking about, but can be themselves."

Ramone is so taken with one particular CNBC commentator, in fact, that he's written a song for her. It's an up-tempo pop tune, tinged with classic Ramones intensity: "What's happening on 'Squawk Box?'/ What's happening with my stocks?/ I wanna know/I watch her every day/I watch her every night/She's really out of sight/Maria Bartiromo, Maria Bartiromo, Maria Bartiromo!"

This stock market fixation is the closest Ramone has come to a full-time job since his band stopped touring in 1996. By that time, Ramone jokes, they'd earned "billions." While that's obviously an exaggeration, it's clear he's doing fine: Rhino Records just released a Ramones anthology, "Hey! Ho! Let's Go!," and his songs still get played everywhere, from movie soundtracks to beer commercials. "It's lucrative," says Ramone, who was born Jeffrey Hyman. "The band's become more popular since we've broken up."

On the surface, Ramone seems very much his old self. Rail thin, strikingly tall and pale as paper, he has lived in the same East Village apartment building for 20 years, doesn't own a car (he takes a train or car service to Woodstock when he needs a getaway) and still wears beat-up jeans ("When I start wearing Dockers," he laughs, "that'll be time to give it up"). The only other things he spends money on are vintage concert posters from '60s stalwarts like The Who and Jimi Hendrix, or autographs like a signed photo of the Rolling Stones with Brian Jones. "I got them in the early '80s, before the boom took off," he says.

Ramone is working on a solo album and has recorded six tracks (including "Maria Bartiromo") to shop around at smaller labels. "I'd get lost at a big one," he explains. But, truthfully, it's investing that generates most of his income these days. "It's my new religion," he says. "It's almost like music-making — a passion."

Ramone started getting excited about investing in 1992, after he stopped drinking and living like a hard rocker. "You get sober and see a Coca-Cola (KO) truck in a different way," he says. "One day it's just a truck full of soda. But the next day you see it as something with profit potential."

His current portfolio is full of familiar names: Intel (INTC), Amazon (AMZN), General Electric (GE), Yahoo! (YHOO), Time Warner (TWX) and Hughes Electronics (GMH). "Over the last few years, with DirecTV and what's happening with satellites and telecom, Hughes is a pretty happening company," says Ramone, who acquired the stock for $61 in 1997, before the company joined forces with Raytheon (RTN.B).

Ramone is zealous about his stocks — describing his investing style as "instinctual and organic" — but tends to hold on to them tightly. "If I have 100 shares of something, I just let it hang out and all of a sudden one day you're surprised by good news," he says. "Years ago I had Adobe (ADBE), when it was hot. Then it cooled, and all of a sudden, it started taking off again. I like to let it ride." But then, "sometimes it's better to let it go. My broker tells me I shouldn't get married to my stocks."

At the moment Ramone's financial betrothed is Amazon, a stock he bought for $15 in 1997 when he was first excited by e-commerce. He still likes it enough to weather the massive swings that can come with tech stocks. "It can be stressful at times — especially when you get caught in corrections." Such was the case earlier this year. Though Ramone had locked in profits in December, selling shares of Yahoo and other tech winners, his gut told him to sit tight with Amazon, hoping it would hold its price and give him a tax break for 1999. "Since then the market has bounced back," he says, "but the individual stocks haven't necessarily. Amazon hasn't."

Still, the decline hasn't soured him on tech stocks. In fact, right now Ramone is focusing on business-to-business Internet stocks, with Commerce One (CMRC) his first foray into the sector. "In December it was a highflier," he says. "It split and I bought it two weeks ago, a bit high at $195. There's since been a slight correction, but everybody feels hot for this company. My broker liked that one."

Certainly, he's come a long way since his first investing experience, which, as is common for a lot of rockers, was a bad one. Back in the '70s, when the band was coming into its own, Ramone placed his money with a broker and stayed hands off, only to have his account endlessly churned by a less-than-ethical salesman, he claims. With the exception of Polaroid, the stocks bought for him did little in the way of turning profits, and the fees piled up. "Basically, this broker guy kind of dicked me."

When he got serious about investing again, Ramone decided to try another broker. He interviewed several money managers and wound up with Marty Lutschaunig, who works for Merrill Lynch and also happens to be a friend of Ramone's mother. (She's an artist and gallery owner; his father owned a trucking company.) "He's honest, not a hustler," he says.

This time Ramone is much more hands on, too, occasionally talking with Lutschaunig a few times a day and constantly sharpening his own market acumen. Aside from watching CNBC, he reads the Wall Street Journal and cruises the Net for tips from Yahoo, Raging Bull and TheStreet.com. "I've got more time than I used to," he admits. But he's still not a fan of automated trading. "I want to trade online," he explains, "but for a long time I just haven't been comfortable with it."

Sometimes Ramone and his broker lock horns, like when Lutschaunig steers him away from more speculative stock picks and encourages profit-taking. "Joey believes what he believes," Lutschaunig says, "and nothing will move him off of that. But we want to make sure that what he's doing is part of a strategy." Their most recent disagreement was over Joey's insistence on buying shares of 4 Kids Entertainment (KIDE), the company that makes and markets Pokemon in the U.S. "The stock had been on a roll, but during the last couple months, well, it hasn't been," Ramone says. "I watched it go up and split twice, then got in a little late."

"What happened," he continues, "is that I made good money but didn't take my profits. Six months ago it would do 40 points in a day. I was up about 20K when my broker told me to take my profits, but I didn't listen. I guess I was greedy."

Asked if he sees the irony of discussing stockbrokers, splits and B2Bs with the same ease with which he once discoursed on punk rock, Joey Ramone suddenly sounds suspiciously like a grown-up who might be ready for his first pair of Dockers. "Music is terrible today," he says, "dull and synthetic. I'm more excited by the stock market." Even better, it reminds him of his old turf. "What's great about the Internet revolution," he says, "is that it's put the kids on top of the business world. The tables have turned, just like in punk. There's never a dull moment."