She predicted the 1987 stock market crash a week before it happened. She co-owned the hedge fund. She came back years after stepping away and helped recover a $90 million loss. So why does almost nobody know her name?
Karen Backfisch-Olufsen is Jim Cramer’s first wife, the co-founder and half-owner of Cramer & Co., and a Wall Street trader who carried the nickname “Trading Goddess” long before Cramer made it public. She spent six years at the centre of one of the most successful hedge funds of the late 1980s and 1990s, then stepped back to raise her family in Summit, New Jersey. She has stayed out of public life almost entirely since divorcing Cramer in 2009.
Most articles written about her get the details badly wrong, confusing her with a different person entirely.
Table of Contents
Quick Profile
| Also known as | Karen Cramer (during marriage), Karen Backfisch |
| Education | State University of New York at Stony Brook |
| Early career | Assistant Vice President, Lehman Brothers |
| Role at Cramer & Co. | Co-founder, half-owner, head trader |
| Known as | The Trading Goddess |
| Married Jim Cramer | 1988 |
| Divorced | 2009 |
| Children | Cece Cramer (born approximately 1991), Emma Cramer (born approximately 1994) |
Before She Met Cramer: Lehman Brothers and Steinhardt Partners
After graduating from SUNY Stony Brook, Karen Backfisch joined Lehman Brothers as an Assistant Vice President, supporting portfolio managers on investment decisions. From there she moved to Steinhardt Partners, the hedge fund run by Michael Steinhardt, whose firm was widely regarded as one of the most demanding and respected on Wall Street throughout the 1980s.
By the time Jim Cramer arrived at Steinhardt’s offices, Karen had already built a reputation there. Cramer’s own memoir, Confessions of a Street Addict, puts the timeline plainly: when he first encountered her at Steinhardt’s offices, she was already referred to as “Wall Street’s so-called Trading Goddess.” The nickname came before the relationship. She was not Cramer’s discovery. She was already established.
How They Actually Met: One Year, Not Five
In 1987, Cramer left Goldman Sachs and set up his new fund inside Steinhardt Partners’ offices. Karen Backfisch was already there, trading for Steinhardt. They met that year.
Per the Pennsylvania Center for the Book, drawing directly on Cramer’s account: he met his future wife while she was working as a trader at the same firm, and a year later they were married.
One year. Not five. The “five years of courtship” repeated across almost every article about her has no basis in any primary source.
The defining moment in their early relationship came approximately one week before Black Monday on October 19, 1987. Karen told Cramer to sell everything. He did.
By his own account, his fund broke even for 1987 while the S&P 500 lost 18 per cent over the same period. For a fund in its first year of operation, that gap was the difference between survival and an early shutdown.
Writing in New York Magazine in May 2002, Cramer stated it plainly. She had predicted the crash. He had not. He named her as the fund’s “half owner” and credited her directly with keeping the firm alive in its first year.
Fortune Magazine, 1989: “Are These the New Warren Buffetts?”
Fortune profiled them under that headline in 1989, calling the pair “Mr. and Mrs. Aggressive.” The article described a windowless lower Manhattan office, matching desks, both of them on phones simultaneously.
Cramer produced the investment ideas. Karen executed the trades, using methods she had developed under Steinhardt. When the article ran, the fund had just delivered a 23 per cent compound annual return in its first full year.
“Karen and Jim Cramer, 31 and 34, are the quintessential Eighties couple, equal partners in work and at home. He generates most of the investment ideas; she handles the trades, using techniques she learned at the feet of master trader Michael Steinhardt.”
Fortune Magazine, 1989
The fund would go on to manage $450 million in assets and produce a 24 per cent average annual return across its full lifespan.
Karen also built the fund’s information-gathering system from scratch. She spread trading commissions across multiple brokerage firms. Grateful analysts at those firms returned Cramer’s calls with market intelligence. A Baltimore Sun review of Confessions of a Street Addict noted this system became central to how the fund gathered its edge throughout its peak years.
Family, Summit, and Stepping Away From the Trading Floor
Cece Cramer was born around 1991. Karen stepped back from daily trading at that point, though she remained involved in the fund’s broader direction for a few years after that. By the time Emma arrived around 1994, she had wound down her active role at the firm completely. When the 1998 crisis hit, Cramer noted it had been roughly four years since she last worked directly at the fund, which puts her full departure precisely at 1994.
The family moved from Brooklyn Heights to Summit, New Jersey in 1993. Both daughters attended local public schools there, and Cramer later coached school sports teams in the area, as NJ Monthly reported in 2007.
In 1989 Fortune had compared Karen to Warren Buffett. By the mid-1990s she had left that behind to raise her daughters in a New Jersey suburb, without ever speaking publicly about the decision. Cramer co-founded TheStreet.com in 1996, which added entirely new pressure on top of an already demanding life. The Washington Post’s August 2000 profile of Cramer documented the strain that followed.
October 1998: The Chapter Nobody Else Covers
By October 8, 1998, Cramer’s fund had lost $90.9 million. Managing roughly $281 million, it was down 32 per cent while the S&P 500 was up 29 per cent that same year. Half of the approximately 100 investors were pulling their money simultaneously.
Cramer called Karen and asked her to come back to the office, for the first time in roughly four years. Her initial response, per the account in his memoir:
“You’re nuts.”
She came anyway.
The chapter in Confessions of a Street Addict covering this period is titled “Crisis in 1998: The Trading Goddess Returns.”
She worked from the Standard and Poor’s oscillator, a tool measuring selling pressure against buying pressure. She went through the portfolio position by position with Cramer and his partner Jeff Berkowitz. Where the oscillator showed extreme selling pressure, her read was consistent: buy into it. The fund had been paralysed by investor withdrawals. Karen’s assessment cut against the panic in the room.
Before leaving the office to collect their daughter from school, she fixed a Post-it note to Cramer’s terminal. It read:
“It’s good to be good, but it’s better to be lucky.”
Between October 8 and year-end, the fund made back $110 million, finishing 1998 with a small positive return. Cramer later described October 8 in Getting Back to Even as a date he carried with him ever since.
The Marriage Breaks Down
By 2000 the marriage was in serious trouble. The Washington Post’s profile that year was blunt: TheStreet.com had placed relentless new demands on top of a fund that already consumed most of Cramer’s waking hours. The fund had returned 47 per cent in 1999 and 28 per cent in 2000, its strongest run, yet the stronger the performance got, the harder Cramer pushed, and the less present he was at home.
Karen made clear she wanted part of her husband back. The Pennsylvania Center for the Book recorded that by 2000 she had given him an ultimatum: slow down or face real consequences.
A detail from a Baltimore Sun review of Confessions is difficult to move past. During one market crisis, Cramer was on his mobile phone talking to his trading desk while Emma was being born.
Cramer retired from the fund in 2001, handing control to Jeff Berkowitz. The marriage lasted eight more years, but what had broken between them was not repaired.
The Divorce and the Settlement
After 21 years together, they divorced in 2009. Neither party has publicly stated a reason.
In Episode 383 of The Pomp Podcast, aired September 14, 2020, Cramer disclosed the terms. He transferred most of the money he had made from trading to Karen, describing the decision as a way to avoid a contested process. He sold her their Summit mansion for $1.
Per Celebrity Net Worth, the couple had bought that property in 1999 for $2.375 million. Karen sold it in April 2019 for $3.675 million.
Between 2000 and 2003, the pair had also invested $4.1 million in a real estate venture called Stone Foundation, run by their Summit neighbour D. Wyatt Stone. After discovering their money had been redirected to other purposes, they filed suit in 2009 as co-plaintiffs. The case settled in mid-2015.
Jim Cramer remarried in April 2015. His second wife, Lisa Cadette Detwiler, is a Brooklyn-based real estate broker.
Where Is She Now?
Since 2009, Karen has stayed almost completely out of public view.
No press interviews. No public appearances. Her Instagram, @igotyoubabe6070, is set to private. Her Facebook profile, listed under Karen Backfisch, is rarely active.
As of 2026, the clearest picture of her current life comes through Emma, who posts on Instagram occasionally. In June 2021, Emma shared that she and Karen had survived a six-car collision on the New Jersey Turnpike after a trip to the NY Botanical Garden. Both came through unhurt.
She has not publicly confirmed any remarriage. The “Olufsen” in her surname, adopted after the divorce, has never been publicly explained.
Her younger daughter Emma graduated from Tulane University in 2016 with a BA in Art History, later studied fashion and apparel design at Parsons School of Design, and launched her label Folds in 2023. Cece maintains a fully private life.
The Karen Finerman Confusion: Setting the Record Straight
Most of what has been written online about Karen Backfisch-Olufsen belongs to a completely different person: Karen Finerman.
Karen Finerman is the CNBC Fast Money panelist, founder of Metropolitan Capital Advisors, sister of Forrest Gump producer Wendy Finerman, and wife of financier Lawrence Golub. She has no family or professional connection to Karen Backfisch.
Any article crediting Karen Backfisch-Olufsen with founding Metropolitan Capital Advisors, a Beverly Hills upbringing, a Wharton education, a board seat at the Michael J. Fox Foundation, or a trusteeship at Montefiore Medical Center is wrong. Those details belong to a different woman, and the error has spread through AI-generated sites copying each other without checking primary sources.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Karen Backfisch-Olufsen?
Jim Cramer’s first wife, co-founder of Cramer & Co., and the Wall Street trader credited with predicting the 1987 market crash. She has kept a private life since their 2009 divorce.
What did Cramer & Co. achieve under her involvement?
The fund managed $450 million in assets at its peak and produced a 24 per cent average annual return across its full lifespan. It outperformed the S&P 500 in every year between 1988 and 1996 except two. In its opening year, with Karen as co-founder and head trader, it returned 23 per cent.
Is she the same person as Karen Finerman?
No. Karen Finerman is the CNBC Fast Money panelist and founder of Metropolitan Capital Advisors. The two women have no connection. The confusion is widespread online but is straightforwardly disproved by checking primary sources.
Why did she and Jim Cramer divorce?
Neither party has stated a reason publicly. Washington Post reporting from 2000 documented serious strain in the marriage tied to Cramer’s working hours and his involvement with TheStreet.com. The divorce was finalised in 2009.
Did she remarry?
No confirmed remarriage has been reported. The “Olufsen” in her name, adopted post-divorce, has never been publicly explained.
What is her net worth?
No verified figure exists. The $1 million estimate on various sites appears to fall well short of her actual position, given that the divorce settlement included most of Cramer’s trading profits and a property that sold for $3.675 million in 2019.
Who are her daughters?
Cece Cramer, born around 1991, keeps a fully private life. Emma Cramer, born around 1994, studied at Tulane and Parsons and launched her fashion label Folds in 2023.
