Cramer on Today Show
I was towelling off my head, so I may have misheard this at 7am, but:
Did I hear Jim Cramer on the Today Show declaring this to be the start of a new Bull Market?
Mark today's date: 3/17/06.
I suggest we revisit this in 6 months, when I will either a) eat crow, or 2) Point out that JJC topticked a major reversal for the 2nd time in 6 years . . .
>
UPDATE: March 17, 2006 5:43pm
The WSJ's MarketBeat points to blogginwallstreet's analysis of all the Mad Money's stock picks:
Cramer's Calls a Crap Shoot
http://www.blogginwallstreet.com/2006/03/cramers-calls-crap-shoot.html
The Cult of Personality debate continues . . .
Friday, March 17, 2006 | 08:45 AM | Permalink
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Comments
No fucking way. He called a 'new bull' in March
of 2000?
Wow. I'm speechless.
Are you serious???
Posted by: Major Tom | Mar 17, 2006 9:25:34 AM
I sure as heck can't believe that. Or can I? I've got the quote somewhere in print but Cramer also said in 2000 that Sun was the most attractive stock in the universe. It was one of his EXTREME statements. Sun was trading at $65 and now it's $4. And he tried to jump on that pig and many others with his comments many times these drops were great buying opps.
Can anyone explain something to me? I've been watching the P/C for ages and there was a reading on the index P/Cs of 0.25 yesterday. That reading has never been registered EVER as far as I can see. Is there some OE phenomenon I might be missing?
Posted by: B | Mar 17, 2006 9:36:10 AM
Man - I swear. I turned on his radio show once and
he was yapping about how smart he was for
avoiding the tech downturn in 2000.
Would be nice to see how his hedge fund buddies
are doing now. Selling hard and fast.
Posted by: Major Tom | Mar 17, 2006 9:46:23 AM
LOL.... man, I like your blog. Cramer is a circus performer.
Posted by: emd | Mar 17, 2006 9:48:17 AM
Fantastic. I've never made a big deal about fading someone's call, but this has to be sure sign that the downturn is near.
Posted by: Uncle Jack | Mar 17, 2006 9:58:37 AM
Everyone like this rally? Biggest sector gainer? HOMEBUILDERS. Up 8%.
Posted by: B | Mar 17, 2006 10:00:55 AM
Opinions are like a--holes, almost everybody has one, you can't smell your own and the other guy's usually stinks!
Cramer also called GOOG to be at 600 this spring, maybe so.
Posted by: Uncle Bob | Mar 17, 2006 10:03:28 AM
http://www.thestreet.com/funds/smarter/891820.html
Read the details of Cramer's call here.
Posted by: Brett Clare | Mar 17, 2006 10:05:47 AM
Oh sh*t, the minute I say that Pisani quotes Robert Toll who says the downside is overhyped to the housing market. Now, I'm not taking sides but has anyone looked at when Big Bob and his brother sold something like half a billion dollars worth of stock? Last year near the homebuilders peak. He's an old man. If he thought that, why did he sell? He doesn't need the money. He's rich and he's got one foot in the grave. Exaggeration but I can't help but puke when I see this shoddy corporate governance and some snake oil salesman who pumped his company's outlook as it went from $60 to 28 and he sold at something like $58. That really infuriates me.
Posted by: B | Mar 17, 2006 10:06:49 AM
The Winners of the New World
http://www.thestreet.com/_rms/funds/smarter/891820.html
This post on the link above is dated 2/29/2000.
Posted by: brett clare | Mar 17, 2006 10:08:10 AM
Not a new bull -- but he was very bullish back in March 2000 -- remember that acronym of his for Qualcom, Yahoo, et. al. ?
Posted by: Barry Ritholtz | Mar 17, 2006 10:17:49 AM
B,
The last time the put call ratio hit 24% was in the early/mid 80's. Awesome.
Money quote from the article: "That's why, despite the 80% increase in the Nasdaq last year, we are looking at another record year now." JJC, 2/29/2000
The market really looks like it wants to go up this AM, but since it's OE day, my impression is that the NAS will pin at 2300, the S&P @ 1310 and the Dow @ 11250-11300. Next week will be "fun."
Posted by: Bynocerus | Mar 17, 2006 10:20:05 AM
Bob Toll's recent sales:
http://exurbannation.blogspot.com/2006/03/ask-not-for-whom-bob-tolls-he-tolls.html
Posted by: Robert Cote | Mar 17, 2006 10:36:26 AM
BERQY -- Broadcom, eBay, Research In Motion, Qualcomm and Yahoo
which has since become GERQY with Google swapping out for Broadcom
Posted by: Barry Ritholtz | Mar 17, 2006 10:55:06 AM
The extremely low and skewed p/c ratio was the result of a dividend capture strategy for the SP from my info. So it is definitely not a "pure" p/c ratio figure.
Also, Cramer put up an article today on RM that we can forget about the Nasdaq for now. Guess that means the tech underperformance is just about over. And when the madman starts writing 10 articles a day on BRCM & MRVL, that will be the key to sell.
Posted by: Michael C. | Mar 17, 2006 10:57:54 AM
Michael C.
You're absolutely right on the dividend strategy. What scares me, though, is that the play for the S&P dividend is greener than Kermit. Once you factor in transaction and assignment costs, your best hope is to just break even. I have a hard time believing the institutions are dumb enough to try this silliness, which by default leaves it to retail odd lot traders and speculators - not a good thing.
Posted by: Bynocerus | Mar 17, 2006 11:10:02 AM
Hmmm...didn't watch The Today Show, but I just received an alert that on Wed, 15th, Cramer sold 12,500 of his TSCM shares. It's the old saying, do what I tell you to do and don't worry about what I'm actually doing. ;)
Posted by: Tim | Mar 17, 2006 11:27:11 AM
I have this gimmick I've worked out. Watch the Lightning Round. Whatever sectors all the callers are asking about (at least those who get through to talk to him) - SELL. Buy the ones they aren't talking about.
Lately they seem to be calling about chips and optical stuff.
Posted by: Brian | Mar 17, 2006 11:27:36 AM
PS: this goes along with my other gimmick: the Kudlow Fade. Take the opposite side of anything he suggests. Last year he hated energy, commodities, and Brazil (Lula the Lefty!). So I bought some. Um, good call there dude.
What does he hate this year? Haven't been able to watch as much.
Posted by: Brian | Mar 17, 2006 11:30:58 AM
the real story about Cramer, circa 2000:
He was jumping up and down bullish through the better part of the 3rd quarter in 2000.
Of course the market tanked Q1, but there was a huge dead cat bounce leading up to labor day.
That was when Todd Harrison turned very publicly bearish.
Despite Todd Harrison's line in the sand type call, after Labor Day 2000 Cramer penned a piece essentially explaining the Bull train was leaving the station. More importantly he slimed anyone stupid enough to be short, predicting they would be a smoking hole in the ground.
Then, suddenly over that weekend, he pulled an absolute 180 degree turn. Total reversal.
To his credit he posted a serious missive outlining his new-- totally bearish-- view.
At first he was rather vague about the reason for the about face, but in an AOL chat later that week he responded to an inquiry about his abrupt, startling shift: simply put, he had been voted down by his partners who disagreed with his bullish call. He further explained they had made a bundle YTD, esp in the Q1 blowoff top, and were each facing the biggest payday of their lives with their looming fiscal year end just around the corner (as he explained, hedge funds lock in that 20% one day a year). Paraphrasing further, there was no reason to risk it, and he felt responsibility to others in the firm who had a hard earned bonus coming, and that sort of thing.
In essence he was towing the line for sake of the other managers and employees of the hedge fund.
But he did not truly adorn the Grizz outfit until, lo and behold, the market started to carve out what was becoming an obvious "lower high".
By October he was mercilous toward anyone online or on TV spouting bullish drivel.
And of course we now know right about that time something triggered his decision to "retire" and lock in that famous 24%-after-fees-for-14-years" track record (said he: 20 hour days, wanted to see his kids, etc).
Cramer is a piece of work, no doubt. But everything he says is on the record, even available in the archives. And the guy is a genius, even if some people think he's a lunatic.
Sometimes he's a great contrary indicator, sometimes he's a valuable tool because he'll relay to us mere mortals what insti's have been whispering in his ear (a window on that world otherwise unavailable), and sometimes he absolutely nails a big shift, a fantastic thesis, or some quirky detail nobody else has noticed yet.
But the Booyahians kneeling at the Cramer altar need their head examined; at the other end of the spectrum, the hate-cramer-24/7 folks need to get a life.
jw
Posted by: jw | Mar 17, 2006 11:50:32 AM
>>>I just received an alert that on Wed, 15th, Cramer sold 12,500 of his TSCM shares<<<
The guy owns 2 million shares. Maybe he just wanted some chump change in his bank account for his upcoming vacation. What's the big deal.
Posted by: Michael C. | Mar 17, 2006 11:51:24 AM
from 2000/2003 Cramer called the bottom on every minor/major bounce for 3 years. if you say it enough times, sooner or later you will be right.
Posted by: Bob A | Mar 17, 2006 12:14:16 PM
First off, I don't feel terribly compelled to do digging to support this statement but I do know for a fact Cramer had repeatedly told people to hop onto some of those train wrecks after they cratered. They were buying opportunities post 2000 according to his commentary. Unfortunately they were down 30% but many went down another 60%. Sometmes he is a contrarian and sometimes he is not? ie, He is right no more than he is wrong which is posted on CXOAdvisory.com in numerous articles which actually track the facts. He has not beat the averages since his show went live as I recall. Hell, in a bull market, I can do that by throwing darts at a board of high relative strength stocks. Loved his logic for Google's evaluation. Wall Street math. Something you'd never see a quant or technician say. But then he discounts both as foolish. Outrageous unsustainable PE * outrageous unsustainable earnings = $600 at a point in time that was on the tail end of one of the longest bull cycles in the last hundred years WHEN risk management tells a smart investor to be prudent. What was Ritholtz saying at the same time Cramer was pumping Google to $600 and took a huge bath? Be careful and conservative. That's why I like reading the posts from others and from him and I don't subscibe to RM to listen to things I know to be totally false.
I especially like how he discounts technicians and quants. Especially since nearly every one was totally bearish as early as 1998 and Cramer was telling people to buy dips post 2000. It's even more ironic because wasn't he a broker for Goldman? You know, Goldman makes nearly all of its money trading. Quants and technicians provide the trading vehicles, guidance and models for all of that money. Every single nickle. I'm not being anti Cramer. I'm saying that there are too many people on Wall Street that have no track record of prudence in times of high risk, which usually means they cannot beat the market. Yet, they are constantly recycled and we listen to their gibberish time and time and time over. It's like having someone who flunked math as your high school calculus teacher. But it is accepted and they flourish on Wall Street.
Cramer is a genius? That one I would buy. But being a genius does not guarantee one to be a prudent speculator. The past is riddled with genius that lost everything. I don't doubt he is extremely smart. But, usually people outside of the bell curve have some idiosyncracies with their behavior. We all know what our demons are. A little psychoanalysis of a personality profile that is not uncommon on Wall Street. I'd tend to imagine this fits the perma bulls as a general rule. It's teh compulsive persona. From Atlantic City to Wall Street is a short walk for people who become enthralled with gambling at a young age. You know, many personality types with idiosyncracies end up in a career that sort of fuels their compulsion. I don't think it's a coincidence those personality types end up on Wall Street.
Posted by: B | Mar 17, 2006 12:39:04 PM
I think the main point to take away from this is when Cramer is on tv, it's a good time to take a shower.
Posted by: Bob A | Mar 17, 2006 12:51:58 PM
Because if you listen you will take a bath...
Posted by: Ned | Mar 17, 2006 1:35:29 PM
