"Propaganda Wins, Small Investors Lose"
By Jim Cramer
RealMoney.com Columnist
4/18/2007 10:02 AM EDT
"After a big run in the market, why stay optimistic? Why not think it can't continue? I believe it's because the retail investor's still not in the market yet. That's right, just look at what Ameritrade (AMTD - commentary - Cramer's Take - Rating) said yesterday on its call: a dramatic decrease in trading and interest on the part of retail clients.
Plus, when you read the problems with KeyCorp (KEY - commentary - Cramer's Take - Rating), you will see a remarkable surge in buying of certificates of deposit earlier this year.
Knight (NITE - commentary - Cramer's Take - Rating), another retail outfit, just confirmed this trend with a report that came out this morning.
With high short-term rates, you have always had the allure that keeps trillions out of the market.
But there's something more important going on, something that I feel is so awful, so wrong, but so typical of what's going on in this market: the China fall.
It's pretty obvious from the decline in Ameritrade's business that the selloff in late February just killed the retail investor's appetite. There was so much panic, so much horror, so much of what I call the "alleged prudence" by the media and tepid analysts and aggressive bears, that it worked! It freaked people out. It got them out at the bottom.
Now, is that what we really want? I don't even know anymore. I know that when I went on the Today show recently and recommended buying Exxon (XOM - commentary - Cramer's Take - Rating), AT&T (T - commentary - Cramer's Take - Rating), Procter & Gamble (PG - commentary - Cramer's Take - Rating) and Coke (KO - commentary - Cramer's Take - Rating), I felt like the tireless hack, the guy who had been labeled a "permabull." I felt I had zero impact.
I did!
What was really egregious about this selloff, what got so many people scared and so many retail investors frightened away, was the equipment breakdown in the NYSE (NYX - commentary - Cramer's Take - Rating)!
I am not kidding. The fact that the market couldn't handle the orders that happened between 2:30 p.m. and 3:15 p.m. ET that day caused the market to drop 300 points in just a few minutes. That showed the fragility of the system, not the fragility of the companies -- but it was enough.
As I droned on about history, that the market was at 1200 when I started but was now at 12,000 and that should count for something, I was overwhelmed by the people who talked about how the run was over. The papers were filled with that claptrap. The bears were trotted out on TV and, more important, a bunch of bulls who had turned bearish emerged.
I simply can't blame retail for running to CDs.
There's a heavy responsibility, I believe, on the part of commentators, analysts, reporters and hosts to be balanced, to show that a selloff could be an opportunity, not the end. There's a responsibility to say that perhaps the time to sell was before the downturn, not after it. There was a responsibility to reveal what many of us insiders knew: that the equipment caused the selloff.
But no one would reveal that, even as it was fed by specialists who were anxious to show that the desire by the NYSE to eliminate humans was behind the 300 points in a few minutes. I later confirmed it but when I went out with it, I was quickly discredited by a cover-up story that it was Dow Jones' (DJ - commentary - Cramer's Take - Rating) fault! Hysterical; that was simply impossible, as the prices of individual stocks are not affected by the Dow Jones reporting techniques. But the cover-up story stuck.
Now the market's exciting again and I sense that retail investors now will start rolling in as we go higher. But the reality is that the easy money has been made.
I regard the whole exercise as shameful. The bearish propaganda won out, the disinformation worked again. Yet no one is accountable.
What a big joke it all is. "
(in
www.realmoney.com)