MOST NOTEWORTHY: Marvel Entertainment, Macrovision and K-Sea Trans were today's noteworthy initiations:

• Thomas Weisel initiated Marvel Entertainment (NYSE: MVL) with a Market Weight rating and $34 target citing valuation and lack of meaningful operational catalysts until 2010.
  
• Kaufman Bros. assumed Macrovision (NASDAQ: MVSN) with a Buy rating and $27 target. The firm believes the merger with Gemstar TV Guide creates a powerhouse in digital media technology licensing with a compelling financial model.
  
• Wachovia expects K-Sea Trans (NYSE: KSP) to benefit from stable petroleum product demand, longer-term contracts, and aggressive new building program. Shares were started with an Outperform rating.

OTHER INITIATIONS:

• Safe Bulkers (NYSE: SB) was initiated with a Neutral rating at Merrill Lynch and an Outperform rating and $25 target at Credit Suisse.
  
• Stephens initiated Life Time Fitness (NYSE: LTM) with an Overweight rating and $37 target and Town Sports (NASDAQ: CLUB) with an Equal Weight rating and $10 target.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says you can call him all the names in the book, but he's right, and the shorts know it.

It was a cause I didn't want to take up. I didn't want to take it up because I knew the short-sellers would paint me as a naïve, clueless defender of the bull, and the long owners wouldn't really understand the idiosyncrasies of the subject. It was a cause I knew the brokers would never defend because their best business that is left is prime brokerage, and they need giant hedge funds to trade with them and can't risk alienating them.

I am talking about the uptick rule, the 70-year-old rule put in by the SEC to stop the process of "raiding" stocks, meaning sending them down by knocking all bids down underneath to where panic could and would ensue.

Today's typical. The Journal breaks its seeming 10-year embargo on mentioning me or my show with a piece that basically says I have no idea what I am talking about and am a fool to bring it up. It quotes James Bianco, from Bianco Research right after me saying, "Anyone who thinks the removal of this rule is somehow causing havoc in the financial markets is hopelessly lost in the bark of one tree and may never be able to see the forest." He then goes on to say, "To suggest that the removal of this rule is causing the markets to go down is to loudly announce, "I don't understand the credit crisis and I am incapable of ever understanding it.'"