Let's say you're a hedge fund manager. You check your screens in the morning. You look around the world. And you know what you see? Green arrows everywhere. Markets up huge: Canada up 27%, Mexico up 16%, Brazil up 62%, Hong Kong up 26%, U.K. up 10%, China up 59% and just about every Asia market up gigantically.
Oh, and the Nasdaq up 11%.
Double digits everywhere.
And you realize, "Oh boy, am I behind."
There's only one way to pass the averages when they are galloping as they are now: Get longer than the averages. Buy stocks. Frantically buy stocks. Cover shorts. Find something in the Nasdaq to buy: Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) (Cramer's Take), Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) (Cramer's Take), Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) (Cramer's Take), Research In Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) (Cramer's Take). Doesn't even matter. Semis, semi equipment, software. Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) (Cramer's Take), KLA-Tencor (NASDAQ: KLAC) (Cramer's Take), Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) (Cramer's Take).
Doesn't matter.
Or the banks; they are behind. How about Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) (Cramer's Take), it's out of the woods. JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) (Cramer's Take) -- stop worrying about credit cards.
You do not think anything other than you are a cornered rat, desperate for performance. You see a rising tide in all nations and you wonder when it will wash up here and take you and your business with it.
The simple truth is that this spring, bull markets have broken out everywhere. Ever since the March 6 bottom the world had changed, and for the better. The depression ended.
No one has ever said you can't make money being long stocks in a recession, because recessions end.
They are ending worldwide.
You just don't read about it.
It makes real bad copy, particularly when the major outlets are populated with nothing but bears, who are unwittingly trying to discourage you from buying. And if you are a hedge fund, you plant that negative stuff every day.
But now it is the end of the month -- judgment day is coming. The world's bullish and buying.
You aren't.
Time to panic.
Jim Cramer is co-founder and chairman of TheStreet.com. He contributes daily market commentary for TheStreet.com's sites and serves as an adviser to the company's CEO. At the time of publication, Cramer was long Qualcomm and JPMorgan.











Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-29-2009 @ 10:12AM
Beltway Greg said...
Jim, this is a tad irresponsible. Volume doesn't suggest any "panic" buying at these levels. Give me a 400-500 point day and then you can call it panic buying. We had a few of those in the last 60 days but I don't think we'll see any of that type of macro-movement. More than likely, oil and the dollar have both hit a plateau until the fall. To be sure, this is a tough market to be short, but I think various stocks will be range bound until they get some type of catalyst. The easy returns are gone. I hope I'm wrong because I'll profit from being incorrect.
5-29-2009 @ 10:59AM
JD said...
Jim Cramer, you are an idiot. What's the matter? Has your "charitable remainder trust" got nothing remaining? Cry a handful and sell your malarke to somebody stupid enough to buy it.
5-29-2009 @ 11:32AM
DOUG MONROE said...
the market is scared to have a pull back...wall street thinks everyone will dump their shares if they do...profits for most companies are down 30% to 60%...obama is trying to instill artificial confidence in this market..now he is trying to foolishly get people to buy houses and cars by scaring them with higher interest rates...( i better go buy a house now that interset rates are going up)..i say don't buy a thing...force the goverment to bring down interest rates and also it will bring down home prices further..use your head!!
5-29-2009 @ 11:59AM
Iridium said...
Jim, are you a complete moron? Seriously. Panic buying is even more dangerous than panic selling. Panic buying sets off huge inflationary bubbles. Just like the one we have created over the past 3 months. You would probably sell out your own mother to get a 15% return on a trade in Brazil
Nothing that has happened over the past 3 months can justify the increase in the market. 60% increases in a market over a short time signals a huge crash ahead. Corporations can't justify this during a time of falling revenues. The recession should not be ending. The artificial market that drove us into recession should not be what leads us out.
We are on our way to 10 million people taking unemployment. There isn't any light at the end of the job tunnel yet. Corporations slashed budgets to create profit and used accounting tricks to make loss on assets look like profit.
We are creating false expansion and setting ourselves up for a bigger fall. We are going to have a huge double dip recession. The effects of the mass layoffs haven't even hit.
I don't think you have one care about the common man. All you care about is the stock market going up. That is how you make money. Truly that isn't how anyone should make money. Ask yourself, without people and wealth to drive the economy, how are people going to support stocks? When people do not have jobs and corporations aren't adding to 401k plans, how do you support stocks?
An economy run by hedge funds is an economy run by dictators. It is in essence fascism. This economy presents the greatest danger to the security of the common man in history.
5-29-2009 @ 12:24PM
Beltway Greg said...
Iridium, be nice. I would take 20% for mom. No doubt they'd want to trade her back in short order, she's a tad difficult, so I'd make money coming and going. In 1980 I watched as the Prime topped 20% and gas went to $1.20 a gallon. All of the smart people told me the end was near, the end was near. Volcker was incapable of doing anything correct. In 1987 I was in an economics class when the dow broke. Greenspan was too new. The professor told us, the end was near, the end was near. In 2000 the Naz topped 5000 and then broke. Everyone told me the end was near, the end was near. The Peso Crisis, the Russian Ruble crisis, stay cool. Actually, don't stay cool. It's folks like you who freak out and make living easy for folks like me. Americans will innovate and the very nature of innovation is, to steal a phrase from Don Rumsfeld, unknowable. If you can't take the heat invest in an S&P ETF. For the rest of your life you'll go to cocktail parties and when your friends ask you how you're doing in the market tell them that for the past five years you've matched the S&P. They'll think you're a genius.
5-29-2009 @ 3:12PM
beachpaul said...
Do we sell into the new buying panic? Or just buy into it? Jim, you are starting to sound like a rock music writer, hyper. Time to panic. Is that the new band CNBC is pushing?
5-29-2009 @ 7:18PM
Larry B-good said...
As a working man for 35 years now a little panic buying thrills the hell out of me and if it drops when its done thrills the hell out of me to as i short my own shares either way im makin money and still workin to cause thats what i do.
you go Cramer cause you may not b a guru but it beats the hell outta death and taxes in the mean time
6-01-2009 @ 3:54PM
terrymacone said...
Faith in wall street is like leaving your kids with a convicted child molester for the weekend,they have about the same credibility ,,,,,,,
6-01-2009 @ 11:33AM
Diane said...
I agree with Jim Cramer. By the end of the year I think the Dow will be at 11,000.