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Chart to chart to chart this weekend and all I see, except for a couple of health maintenance, medical device and drug companies plus some fertilizer stocks, is just a remarkable and, yes, unheralded run in every single group.
Some of them are of the pure recovery style: every oil and gas, now including refinery, as the crude price inches back to $100 and natural gas has started its way back up; the life insurers that were left for dead when we decided that all commercial mortgages would be destroyed taking them with the bad loans; the overly-indebted companies like Textron (NYSE: TXT) (Cramer's Take) that have roared back without any real support from anyone.
But others are just monumental. Anything paper or wood or glass. These aren't quitting.
Anything tech, anything at all. You are seeing the contract manufacturers just zoom here along with most of the component makers. The International Business Machines (NYSE: IBM) (Cramer's Take) we saw last week is not the IBM that's controlling this group; it is the IBM that led up to earnings.
Every retailer has had a magnificent run, with some like Williams-Sonoma (NYSE: WSM) (Cramer's Take), Macy's (NYSE: M) (Cramer's Take) and Gap (NYSE: GPS) (Cramer's Take) enjoying their first good runs in decades.
Let me tell you, if I, too, were not surrounded by endless gloom that's dished out by everyone I deal with, I would say this: We are about to have a very strong recovery with little inflation and a resurgence in hiring that will allow tax receipts to go up and the budget deficit to go down and our taxes to stay stable.
Now, I am not saying that. But the fact that I wrote it will be used against me in pretty much every respectable corner of the investing earth that can be imagined.
Yet, when you see the gains these charts have had, what else are you supposed to think? Are you supposed to think that this is the beginning of something really bad as so many say? Are you supposed to think that week after week of chart action is false? Are you supposed to ready yourself for the vast rollback in food and beverage and bank and tech and oil and gas and industrial? Are we supposed to think that we are in the the waning days of October -- an October, by the way, when people weren't complacent after an initial burst of, "We have been too negative!"
No, I don't think so.
We have big earnings this week, and if we get enough outliers like IBM, that could hurt us. I said on Friday that I thought the Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) (Cramer's Take) production glitch could crimp that company's quarter.
But the body of charts is unheralded.
Let me put it one last way: If I did a chart show, not a fundamental show, it would be about the greatest bull market in history and how each week a new group breaks out.
Instead, when I talk about how good it is and how good it has been since the bottom, I am just ridiculed.
Maybe it's time to be more bearish and get the praise?
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 had no positions in the stocks mentioned.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
10-19-2009 @ 9:54AM
Beltway Greg said...
What's Dykstra say?
He's one of the great ones.
10-19-2009 @ 12:39PM
Iridium said...
The question is still why?
Nobody can give an answer. If the rally holds up it will be the greatest bull run in history without a single market fundamental to back it up.
The situation on the ground is still horrible. More people have lost their homes in the past three months than any time in history, yet the market makes it look like the 9 months prior to March didn't even happen.
It is akin to the Vietnam war. Johnson's commanders said, "Well we've dropped enough bombs to kill every single Viet-Cong, so we must have killed them all". The reality was that the bombs didn't really do anything because they just bombed the same parcel of land over and over again. Pilots could not veer from their predetermined coordinates and the enemy knew where the bombs would drop. they simply didn't go there.
What happened in March was that the Plunge Protection Team flooded the investment banks with trillions of dollars printed from the Treasury who then invested that money in the market to make up for the trillions that were lost. This was to create the illusion of a recovery in order to get the common people who still had money to invest in the market again. For months the trick did not work.
The reason why the market keeps going up is because the major investors are still pushing the market up to try and entice the common people to trade what they have of value for worthless stock certificates. Gains are only gains to your account when you sell after all. Stock value is a false value. It really isn't worth a dime unless someone is willing to give you their cash for your share.
The vast transfer of wealth from the middle class to the wealthy elite happened because of the 401k and the mutual fund. People traded their hard earned salary for worthless stock on the premise that they would get a great return on that investment. Instead over the last 20 years the common person saw their investment crash to zero four or five times. For most people cashing out they would have made more money throwing the money into a high yield savings account. The average person just isn't falling for it again. THAT IS WHY THERE IS SO MUCH TALK ABOUT THE BULL MARKET. IN ORDER TO REALIZE THE GAINS THE INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR MUST SELL TO A WORTHLESS PAWN THAT WILL TAKE THE LOSS DURING THE NEXT COLLAPSE.
SO yes this has been an unprecedented run but it is all vapor. The fundamentals don't support it. The earnings don't support it. The growth of the economy doesn't support it. Nothing supports it.
Yet for some reason the analysts support it. Just because the market went up in the face of all that should have kept it down. In a fantasy world that would be ok. In the real world things must have reason and accountability. If not we just set ourselves up for manipulation, fraud, and defeat.
10-19-2009 @ 4:37PM
Beltway Greg said...
Cramer, time to retire.
Fraud money. You suck.
Joe Terranova. Keep waiting to pull the trigger at $160.00.
Haters start your engines.
Beltway Greg.
Three runs to $200 in three years. Thanks Steve. Thanks Apple. You dudes make me look smart.
10-20-2009 @ 6:09PM
Beltway Greg said...
Cramster,
I've got to admit that through it all you're a stand-up dude. I've heaped tons of abuse on you and you've never deleted a post or sent me a snarky e-mail.
I owe you a single malt and lord knows I can definitely afford it now.
10-22-2009 @ 8:08AM
steve bourg said...
With revenue falling at so many companies, unemployment and foreclosures rising (giant trouble for home-builders), and the consumer-driven economy spending less and less, and the govt wanting/spending more and more of our current and future tax dollars......and federal govt doing the opposite of what we need to revitalize the economy..... how can we conclude things will improve? I'm scared to death of investing in many sectors of the economy.