3/11/08 Video: "Dear Jim Cramer, should I sell Bear Stearns?"

That wouldn't surprise me. I'm just reporting what he said the next day on CNBC in that hyper, high-pitched, only a bat can hear hysterical delivery of his.




Quote from gaj:

maxx - please read my posts in this (getting longer) thread.

on mar 11, on wall street confidential, he said BSC was a buy.

on mar 6, on mad money lightning round, he said BSC was a buy.


here's the money quote from wall street confidential (posted earlier on the thread):

***
"my sources indicate that bear is totally solvent"

"the two points i want to make are that bear is not in trouble; i want to make that point vociferously..."

"bear is now one of these companies that's selling well below book...normally with a brokerage i want to buy in the money calls...i'm a little gunshy at this point, but i know that i would buy a small position in bear options because it's too low, it fell too fast, and i don't want to buy a position when the stock is up."
***

maybe, JUST maybe, in the mailbag he meant the company wouldn't go under. but earlier in the day he had said (at the very least) the options were a buy. a few days earlier, he said the equity was a buy - and he didn't believe anything had changed in the meantime.
 
Cramer was emphatic about everything being fine at Bear. he was 100% wrong. he reminds me of the defense attorney trying to manipulate what a client said on a wire tap. he said x but meant y. its like a mob guy saying "get rid of that guy" and the guy is found dead. the attorney would say he meant tell the guy to go home and have cookies and milk with his kids.
 
on mar 11, on wall street confidential, he said BSC was a buy.

on mar 6, on mad money lightning round, he said BSC was a buy

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Gee whiz guys, this is not a foreign languange. Analyst 101 will tell you this is a sell signal. Isolating a statement out of context of the big picture is dangerous.

My first impression of the video was Cramer was not referring to the stock. He said they could get taken over. This comment was a red flag.

Very possible Cramer is backed into a corner re his producers and editors to say something positive. I could see him popping a blood vessel and fight back and say I can't, well he put on his street speak
cap.

Translate what he doesn't say is more important than what he does say.
 
Cramer was screwed.

He could not say the rank amatuer to sell BSC, any more than he could say sell GS, or C.

Any intermediate trader could pull up BSC and buy puts. The decline was just that orderly.

I don't think Cramer should be blamed on this one. He only had one choice if he wanted to keep his job. And he does have a JOB.

If he had bucked and said, NO, BSC is a sell, we would not have seen the show.

Best Regards
Oddi
 
actually, cramer DID say BSC was a sell in the lightning round at some points in '07, and a quick search showed he didn't like it on jan 8, 2008 - said it was a stock "investors should not touch." needless to say, he changed his mind soon after.

the major (in my opinion, accurate) complaints about him are:

1) he flip-flops on TONS of stocks / indices, often intraday (for the '6-12 month investor') that he's bound to be right on some by pure luck.
2) his action alerts portfolio doesn't outperform the s&p by much, if at all. no one has posted what his performance has been in 2007 or 2008, so i can't 100% verify that, but i know what it was the previous 5+ years.
3) he's tended to be significantly wrong at turning points. if he puts five stocks together which he's been lukewarm/passively positive on, and gives them some kind of catchy name, watch for a topping signal - it's likely coming soon!

but he said a bunch o' times in 07 lightning rounds to sell BSC...
 
Quote from gaj:

actually, cramer DID say BSC was a sell in the lightning round at some points in '07, and a quick search showed he didn't like it on jan 8, 2008 - said it was a stock "investors should not touch." needless to say, he changed his mind soon after.

the major (in my opinion, accurate) complaints about him are:

1) he flip-flops on TONS of stocks / indices, often intraday (for the '6-12 month investor') that he's bound to be right on some by pure luck.
2) his action alerts portfolio doesn't outperform the s&p by much, if at all. no one has posted what his performance has been in 2007 or 2008, so i can't 100% verify that, but i know what it was the previous 5+ years.
3) he's tended to be significantly wrong at turning points. if he puts five stocks together which he's been lukewarm/passively positive on, and gives them some kind of catchy name, watch for a topping signal - it's likely coming soon!

but he said a bunch o' times in 07 lightning rounds to sell BSC...

Thanks for the clarification.

I don't watch Mad Money, because by the time a rank amatuer is calling this type of show, a chartist would have already acted. I have Cramer's book, Confession of a Street Addict. In this book he states that his wife is a better trader than he is, so when I look at pieces of his show I remember that.

Best Regards
Oddi
 
I have Cramer's book, Confession of a Street Addict.

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What was interesting in the book was the fact that gs did his ipo and how little Cramer knew how an ipo was set up even after working there. I find that amazing.

I can appreciate Cramers education and energy level of what it takes to be in the market and yet not know it all. There just aren't any professions out there where after all the hard work and study and being in the trenches, you can miss by a mile. Usually what trips up experts in the field are character flaws not misapplied education and experience.
 
Quote from oddiduro:

I don't watch Mad Money, because by the time a rank amatuer is calling this type of show, a chartist would have already acted.

agreed...i used to watch because i'd fade stocks on a cramer pop (in the evening), but it's nowhere near consistent any longer. i wish his power to move stocks would come back. c'est la vie.


I have Cramer's book, Confession of a Street Addict. In this book he states that his wife is a better trader than he is, so when I look at pieces of his show I remember that.


everything i've read elsewhere, and heard about from others, backs up cramer's statement (about his wife >> him). the funny part, when he had his hedge fund, he wrote a column where he basically said "you're a better investor / long term trader than i am, but i'm a better trader because i'll get the call from goldman about the upgrade and have acted on it ever before you hear about it."

confessions is a *great* book. it's sorely underrated by those who hate cramer, and i think will be a classic on many levels. sure, part (most?) of it is ego-driven, but he's giving us a bird's eye view into much of the shenanigans that went on in the 1990s and how he gamed the system. between that and some of his "buzz and batch" columns (fictitious traders / hedgies, of course!), we and future generations can see much of how he mapped out his success.

agree with nutmeg - i was surprised that he didn't know about GS, or how NITE 'influenced' the after-market in ipos (hell, or the pre-mkt/first couple minutes in tons of nas stocks).
 
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