Jim Cramer's stock picks

Here we go again. The host of CNBC's "Mad Money" gets a going over from two professors at Northeastern University's College of Business Administration, but unlike an earlier study that found his picks to be a money-losing proposition, this research draws a more positive conclusion. The professors, Paul Bolster and Emery Trahan, found that the so-called Cramer portfolio beat the major stock market indexes from mid-2005 to the end of 2007. From DealBook:

The raw numbers look pretty good: From July 2005 through December 2007, the Cramer portfolio returned 31.75 percent, or nearly 12.1 percent on an annualized basis. That is better than the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index, which returned 18.7 percent or an annualized 7.35 percent, as well as the Russell 1000 Growth and Value indexes and the Russell 2000 Growth and Value indexes.

But the booyah crowd should take note: The researchers said that when they used a more complex model that adjusted for exposure to various risk factors -- beta, size, book-value-to-market ratios and momentum -- the Cramer portfolio did slightly worse than the market in 2006, and slightly better in 2007.