To put the above comments from Cramer in perspective (which were made at 7 PM EDT today), here’s some of Cramer’s comments from 1 PM EDT today. These comments were made right before the market took a tumble:
“Tough to take us down. First, we know that the bulls go nuts in the last half hour.
…
Legg Mason (LM – commentary – Cramer’s Take – Rating) and Eastman Chemical (EMN – commentary – Cramer’s Take – Rating) rally on upgrades.
That doesn’t happen in a real bear market.
…
But forget all that. It’s the bull express that comes in at 3:30 p.m., in part because it’s so easy to transfer money from the now 4.72% 10-year — remember when it was supposed to go to 5.5%? You want to get caught up in this?
…
Oh, and don’t believe that the damaged companies don’t have ammo: Bear (BSC – commentary – Cramer’s Take – Rating) says things are great and solidly profitable and Beazer (BZH – commentary – Cramer’s Take – Rating) declares a dividend. (What a bunch of nuts — they bought back stock high and now they declare a dividend? Why not hoard it for even harder times?)
The bears never believed the last half-hour ramp on Fridays.
They still don’t.
But it happened.
By the way, people who were short in 1990 remember this exact same pattern. I used to go to Mrs. Cramer with my head in my hands, telling her how much I had lost on the short side in the last half hour of trading. Made it all back the next four days, of course — until we bottomed and it was time to go the other way.
But not before I made a huge amount of money the other four days of the week.
Takeaway: Don’t ignore the bull markets. Consider that the last half hour can easily ramp again.
Yet never take your eyes off these financials, and cover your shorts to put them out higher later on.”
So at 1:00 PM EDT we were in the midst of a roaring bull market with money being pulled out of treasuries and put in the stock market which suddenly switched at 7:00 PM EDT to a bear market in which money was flowing from everywhere into treasuries and major banks within days of failing if not rescued by the Fed.
I hope Bernanke doesn’t listen to this idiot. I will have a ton of respect for Bernanke if he just lets this whole thing play out on its own with the chips falling where they may. It’s not the Fed’s job to prop up bubble markets and they certainly shouldn’t be propping up this bubblicious housing market.
