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Cramer's Got My Number |
rffrydr
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 Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2008 7:33 pm Post subject: Cramer's Got My Number |
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Well here's the Madman once again: couldn't help reprint 'cause now he's talking to--at--me. Is this really the "secret consensus"?
| Quote: | Sometimes it just hits you. You will be reading an article about some fund manager somewhere who sounds perfectly intelligent and you will spot it, the holy grail of the moment -- THE CONSENSUS. I won't mention the fellow's name -- it is unimportant -- because he's good at his job, but the thoughts he is currently expounding sound like many others I hear, to wit:
Oil prices will fall to $80 a barrel.
The dollar will rise when the Fed stops cutting rates.
GDP growth in China will slow.
First, let me just say that those events would be bullish for every domestic company in our universe, including the financials, and we would have a miracle bull market where less than 20% of the market -- ag/mineral/oil and gas/infra --collapses and fully 80% of the market can rally (I am including the health care stocks because, somehow, they have been seen to become hostage to the weak federal government, and in this scenario I don't see the federal government as worried about cutting back spending).
So, as someone who has to talk about stocks all of the time and has an innate bias -- because I am not a hedge fund operator -- for stocks to go higher, I want this scenario to play out.
But let's take a look at it, because it is what I think the vast majority secretly believes in, and when you get a week where oil falls hard (albeit from really high levels) and the dollar rallies it seems like everyone believes in it out loud and the consensus pops out of the closet.
First, oil. Once again the consensus REFUSES to take into account how little oil is being discovered and how much is being pumped. We just sent oil man xxx Cheney over to Saudi Arabia in an attempt, no doubt, to get them to pump more. Believe me, they want to pump more too. It doesn't matter. Iraq is supposedly more pacified, and while all we hear about is the inevitable stealing of all the money coming from the fields -- typical of the incompetence and corruption that is endlessly worth banking on -- they are pumping more than they have and it doesn't matter. No areas right now are out of commission because of natural disasters or terrorism. Still doesn't matter. The hedge funds have had to unwind their 30-to-1 leveraged hoarding of oil and it STILL doesn't matter.
So what if a few million more people carpool. So what if we keep taking our food supply and shoving it into our tank. It doesn't matter. Don't you think that Exxon (XOM - commentary - Cramer's Take), Chevron (CVX - commentary - Cramer's Take), Conoco (COP - commentary - Cramer's Take), BP (BP - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Royal Dutch (RDS.A - commentary - Cramer's Take) are pumping all they can, because no one believes oil is sustainable at these prices save perhaps Jim Mulva from Conoco?
That's why I think the $80 is a fantasy. It's just too bullish for everything but oil. You believe it? Go buy AMR (AMR - commentary - Cramer's Take). Your money.
Next, the dollar. I think the dollar will rise when the economy gets stronger, but I think the issue with the dollar is how many we print and how little we save and how little we tax and how much we spend both as people and as a nation. Look around at the countries with strong currencies and you will see good growth and self-control, which under this administration has become a joke. I know I can barely contain my contempt for their decision to debase the dollar. They figure no one goes away, I guess.
This is the inevitable result of a plan to dismantle the federal government by starving it: you can't dismantle it and you can't starve it, you just get someone else to pay for it and they are pretty fed up with paying, knowing that there's a lot more supply ahead. I think the dollar will rally when we get some self-control or when we are so cheap that the Europeans come and snatch up our assets with their euros and that -- something I have been completely wrong on because I guess I, too, have been too bullish on the dollar -- hasn't happened yet. Or, the dollar will rally when we get a new administration that isn't as contemptible around the world, and that is viewed as having some self-control. Oh, an aside ... boy, are we hated.
Finally, GDP growth in China. Here's one we have been hearing about for about 10 years. I think there will be a cyclicality to China's growth. The fact that more than half the people in the country have cell phones means, let's say, that there are fewer people who need cell phones than two years ago. That's the kind of undefeatable logic that always prevails.
I point out that what people are really implying is that China will have a bust to go with its boom, which presumes the kind of bust that happened even as this country expanded across the continent. Moments got out of control but it was a really bad bet to believe that there wasn't, at any one time, secular noninflationary growth in this country for more than 100 years. That feels like China to me.
So, while I am a guy who likes a consensus, I see all of the takeaways of this consensus -- short Schlumberger (SLB - commentary - Cramer's Take) and XOM, sell Deere (DE - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Chevron, Halliburton (HAL - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Fluor (FLR - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Bunge (BG - commentary - Cramer's Take) -- having some short-term power to them. I understand the propensity to roll back gold -- the logical extension of a strong dollar.
But I simply don't see the structural side of this bull case -- more oil supply, a better administration, the end of industrialization of China -- playing out in a way that you can do anything but make a trade on it.
The investment side of the anti-consensus just seems a better bet to me. |
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lewie2004
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| Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 10:11 am Post subject: |
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His latest post on conditions....
Checking the Symptoms of This Dire Market
By Jim Cramer
RealMoney.com Columnist
9/29/2008 12:06 PM EDT
So many things going wrong at once, it's rather worth sitting down and giving you a checklist of the symptoms that are killing the patient. So here goes:
All of these injections are the same foolhardy things that central banks keep doing. They are trying to get the banks to lend. They won't. The banks need more incentives to lend. And they need to show they are safe. Without more FDIC insurance for higher levels, without cash being insured to the hundreds of millions for a fee, these banks would be nuts to lend, no matter how many silly injections there are.
The stocks of any companies with any economic sensitivity whatsoever, any, including oil, cannot find a footing, because who knows what will happen to their earnings in a world where there is no credit, which is where we are going. No credit, no business, except for the food banks.
Hedge funds are frantically raising capital to meet third-quarter redemptions. Many have money caught in Lehman and can't get it out. Others are doing so badly that investors are demanding whatever they can get. So any stock that has hedge fund money in it -- oils, commodities, technology -- will be sold, no matter what. These stocks are all sources of funds.
Unemployment is skyrocketing. We know that means consumer spending will be crushed. So any discretionary spend companies will be un-investable.
That leaves cash, health care, food banks, gold and high-yielders as your only bets. Beyond that, I genuinely believe a greater opportunity will come when we see the quarter end and the redemptions stop. The worst that happens is you miss some sort of opportunity that is probably not worth the effort. Let me give you an example. I own some Freeport-McMoRan (FCX) , an immensely profitable gold and copper company that has been more than cut in half. It is buying back stock, it is yielding 3.5%, it just boosted its dividend. I have stayed away from buying it ever since I sold 300 shares from $100 down to $80. I just bought my first 100 shares back at $56. That's about as aggressive as I want to get right now.
Maybe that says it all.
At the time of publication, Cramer was long Freeport-McMoRan.
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nodoodahs
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| Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 10:01 am Post subject: |
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The only prophet that ever was listened to, was Jonah, preaching to Nineveh. But the conversion of Nineveh was only a device to teach Jonah a lesson!
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rffrydr
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| Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 7:50 am Post subject: |
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The revolt:
http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stocks_(A_to_Z)/Stocks_W/threadview?m=tm&bn=19722&tid=132079&mid=132079&tof=4&frt=2
Fortunetellers or truth-tellers, Jesus Christ himself will always be misunderstood. Cassandras. Speak only "to those who have ears to listen."
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nodoodahs
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| Posted: Sun Sep 28, 2008 9:22 am Post subject: |
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Every month later that the bottom comes is probably a month later that the recession comes, as well.
Roubini has a good head-start on calling for a crash, so I suspect Jimbo's gonna "win" by being closer, both percentage-wise and temporally, to the turning point than "Ruby" will be.
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rffrydr
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| Posted: Sun Sep 28, 2008 9:10 am Post subject: |
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Assuming the low point IS in 2008 
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nodoodahs
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| Posted: Sun Sep 28, 2008 9:03 am Post subject: |
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We should compare Cramer's first mention of a bottom with Roubini's first prediction of a recession.
Then track NBER's eventual call (or non-call, as the case may well be) of any recession with the actual low point of the price move in 2008.
That should be good grist for the mill ...
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rffrydr
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| Posted: Sun Sep 28, 2008 8:52 am Post subject: |
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So the Madman has become our "representative." Cramer's been looking like the very washington figures he derides. Pushing the Paulson Plan 110% this last week, he's added his personal touch to the vortex theory: a stock-by-stock look at the Dow and its 2-3000pt downward potential. We'll never know if the "sucker would have gone down" but we do know that in life, as in markets, all extremes become their opposite.
| Quote: | Money Talks
by John Cassidy
October 6, 2008
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Keywords
Economic Crisis; Wall Street; Obama, Barack (Sen.); McCain, John (Sen.); 2008 Election; Debates; Economy
I
n the latest episode of the financial drama “Credit Crunch,” the President, the Presidential candidates, and congressional leaders from both parties gather in the White House to agree on a seven-hundred-billion-dollar bailout for the very financial firms whose greed and recklessness created the crisis. George W. Bush, perched between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is wearing a grim expression. Barack Obama also looks grave, but John McCain, who pretended to “suspend” his campaign before rushing back to Washington to help “solve” the crisis, is grinning broadly. Off camera, House Republican Leader John Boehner is threatening to sink the deal.
As political theatre (“If money isn’t loosened up, this sucker could go down,” Bush declared at one point in the White House meeting, according to the Times), the wrangling over the Wall Street rescue package is engrossing. As an exercise in crisis management, it is potentially disastrous—and, to the rest of the world, dumbfounding. Willem Buiter, an economist at the London School of Economics, who has served on the Bank of England’s policymaking committee, said in a blog entry last Thursday that unless Congress acts now “the freeze of the financial wholesale markets will intensify and the attacks on financial institutions will resume, first in the U.S., then in the U.K., then in the rest of Europe and soon after everywhere in the financially connected world. . . . Instead of a mere recession, there will be a long and deep depression.”
Some experts dispute the Bush-Buiter analysis. One school argues that the financial system is a mere “veil” wrapped around the rest of the economy. Strip it away and other business activities—the development and marketing of new products; families buying clothes and going out for meals—will go on unabated. If a bank that was performing a valuable function fails, another will spring up in its place.
Boehner and his Republican colleagues, to judge from their attempts to block the bailout—which coincided with the failure of Washington Mutual, the biggest banking collapse in U.S. history—were apparently intent on organizing a natural experiment to test the veil theory. But they neglected to point out that their get-tough approach has been tried twice before: in the period from 1929-32, when Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon’s advice to bankers burdened with bad loans was “liquidate, liquidate”; and just a few weeks ago, when Mellon’s successor Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke chose to let Lehman Brothers go bankrupt.
In the first instance, what followed was the Great Depression. In the second, it was outright panic in the markets. The cost of overnight borrowing jumped sharply, and the stocks of other financial firms, including Paulson’s former employer, Goldman Sachs, plummeted. Worried that the entire financial system was about to break down, Paulson and Bernanke embarked on an embarrassing reversal, first agreeing to lend eighty-five billion dollars to A.I.G., the giant insurance company, then launching their controversial mortgage-purchase plan.
from the issue
cartoon bank
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They had little choice. The big banks are so interconnected, and so important to the economy, that they can hold it ransom. A responsible government has to shore up a system in crisis using public money. The only question is on what terms this should be done. Paulson’s first proposal was suspiciously vague and scandalously arrogant. In addition to requesting authority from Congress for the Treasury to spend seven hundred billion dollars—about five per cent of the value of all home loans outstanding—on “mortgage-related assets,” the draft legislation he circulated said that the Treasury Secretary’s actions “may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.” After protests from all sides, negotiators from both parties in Congress and from the Treasury put together a much improved plan, under which the Treasury would be granted access to three hundred and fifty billion dollars, but with a strong oversight board and an independent Inspector General monitoring its actions, and with the Government Accountability Office reviewing them. Access to the remaining three hundred and fifty billion would be contingent on a vote in Congress.
The revised plan almost certainly wouldn’t turn the economy around by itself, but it could help, and some of the objections that have been raised to it are misleading. Ultimately, it is likely to cost a lot less than seven hundred billion dollars. The government, in return for its outlays, will obtain ownership of securities tied to the mortgages of millions of American homeowners. Some, perhaps most, of these lenders will end up defaulting, but that is already figured into the depressed price of the securities. As long as the Treasury Department refuses to pay more than fair value, it should recoup most of its investment. Of course, nobody knows exactly what the securities are worth. But, in return for the Treasury Department’s stepping in and taking on risk, the revised plan requires that the government get “equity sharing”—i.e., the right to buy stocks at a fixed price in the seller bank. If the credit crisis is eventually resolved and investors bid the stocks up again, taxpayers will benefit.
Some economists believe that the government should rescue troubled banks directly, by buying special issues of preference shares. Others propose making the banks fix themselves, by suspending dividend payments and issuing new stock—or even forcing them into bankruptcy courts, where they would have to swap debt for equity. If things don’t improve, Paulson and Bernanke will probably end up adopting some or all of these policies in addition to the asset purchase. Paulson is a practical Midwesterner; Bernanke is a leading expert on the Great Depression. Both men rightly believe that the middle of a financial crisis is no time for ideological inflexibility.
Or for political posturing. On the afternoon of the White House meeting, three Republican congressmen with links to John McCain—Eric Cantor, of Virginia; Jeb Hensarling, of Texas; and Paul Ryan, of Wisconsin—presented a list of conditions that they wanted to be considered in any bipartisan deal, including a privately funded insurance plan for mortgage securities. Such plans would, at best, have a marginal impact on the bank-insolvency problem. (They already exist; A.I.G. was one of their big marketers.) McCain reportedly spoke with House Republican lawmakers before the meeting. When Boehner presented the new proposal, the negotiations collapsed. Did this mean that the G.O.P. had split into two factions on the biggest economic crisis in decades? Or was it, as some Democrats suspect, a mere ruse, designed to give McCain an opportunity to emerge as the savior of an eventual deal?
All we know for sure is that McCain refused to commit either way on the revised plan, or on the House Republicans’ plan, and, according to reports, said next to nothing during the White House meeting. On Friday, despite his earlier proclamations that he wouldn’t leave town until an agreement was struck, he flew to Mississippi for the first Presidential debate, in which he expressed sympathy for the House Republicans, said that he hoped he would be able to vote for a bailout, and repeatedly vowed to “cut spending.” If this is any indication of how a potential McCain Administration would handle a banking crisis, now may be the time to start buying gold and stashing cash under the mattress. |
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rffrydr
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| Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 9:01 am Post subject: |
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http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=860952870&play=1
He can't escape his caricature of Bernanke--but substitute lawyers and contracts and you nailed it again Jimbo.
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rffrydr
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| Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2008 7:38 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Yes, You Heard Me -- That Was the Bottom
By Jim Cramer
RealMoney.com Columnist
7/31/2008 11:48 AM EDT
Click here for more stories by Jim Cramer Try Jim Cramer's Action Alerts PLUS
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Hated call. Guys all over me saying, one, I have repeatedly called a bottom, to which I say, huh? Two, it is not possible, not with this GDP number, not with these housing numbers.
OK, I get it, we are supposed to wait until everything is hunky-dory. We are supposed to keep our powder dry until houses stop declining in value and banks are building up their balance sheets and doing great numbers.
Oh, come on. Do you think that you could wait until Bank of America (BAC - commentary - Cramer's Take) turned or Citi (C - commentary - Cramer's Take) in 1990? Does anyone want to think of history? Or is that bogus? Are other patterns worthless?
Second, while not as good as the Resolution Trust Corp., this Federal Housing Administration funding is very bullish and is being yawned out.
Third, commodities have stopped going up. Maybe they don't plummet, but we can take stagflation off the table.
Finally, when I am hated for a call, I am almost always right. Anecdotal, and I am not saying we are going straight up, I am saying we are not going back to where we were.
Too much has changed. Too much has changed for the better, plus there are plenty of companies that do business overseas, like General Electric (GE - commentary - Cramer's Take) and United Technologies (UTX - commentary - Cramer's Take), and the rails and many of the foods and drugs to encourage me away from the banks that business is not weak enough for many companies to disappoint..
Again, can you wait until everything is great to call a bottom? That has never happened. Ever. |
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rffrydr
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| Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 5:17 pm Post subject: |
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He's thinking straddle sales too. ETF's have been "character changing"
| Quote: | A Key Moment of Calm
By Jim Cramer
RealMoney.com Columnist
7/25/2008 11:59 AM EDT
Click here for more stories by Jim Cramer
Stability. Go figure. It matters. This market needs some days where there is liquidity, where the ETFs are not banging down the oils or crushing the financials. We need to think. We need to be able to figure out what can be bought without being wrong immediately.
I have seen whole stocks destroyed without any real selling and with no buybacks in place because they just reported. That can change, particularly for the industrial stocks like Honeywell (HON - commentary - Cramer's Take) and United Technologies (UTX - commentary - Cramer's Take) that said they believe in what they do.
I believe that we are at a key moment -- we either get calmer or we get even more out of control -- and the former matters for the big institutions that can have felt so whipsawed by the ETFs and the endless bang-downs. Buybacks can stabilize, but they can't meet the massive shorting that is allowed without upticks from either ETFs or actual stocks.
Important time for calm. I hope it stays |
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rffrydr
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| Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2008 9:38 pm Post subject: |
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They're all accurate....at different times. And sometimes more accurate than they know.
As far as the silver? see the copper thread below. I still have my "memorial ounce" I paid $40 for almost three decades ago.
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lewie2004
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| Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2008 7:07 pm Post subject: |
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| rfrydr which guy of the group do you think is most accurate????? I have access to real money silver for seven days.. |
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Suomodo
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| Posted: Thu Jun 19, 2008 12:23 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | No, just more of the same with extreme bouts of selling followed by recovery UNTIL THE HOUSING MARKET RIGHTS ITSELF and OIL STABILIZES AT WHATEVER PRICE IT STABILIZES AT. |
My view for the next 4 months, range bound trading, maybe going a bit lower than 01/2008 (probabily of less than 20%) .... but then (09-10/2008)followed by a 20-30% rally for a couple of months.
Even if we get a depression 2008, it will be the most predicted depression in the history and market can actually rally on it...
Summer time is bad for stocks... it was bad in 2006, 2007 and most people are expecting it also this year ... (just like end of the year rally and January effect failed this year). That makes a good preposition for a summer rally this year to some DJIA 13500-600... (slightly more than 50% probability IMHO) |
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rffrydr
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| Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 4:40 pm Post subject: |
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Response to RBC crash-call and short/long mention of going long. Oil gets all caps at the end:
Crash? Not Likely This Time
By Jim Cramer
RealMoney.com Columnist
6/18/2008 10:31 AM EDT
Click here for more stories by Jim Cramer
Crash? Can we crash? Does RBS have a point with a crash?
First, of course we can crash. Why not? Lots of crummy things are happening. Not a lot of good things. Oil, unemployment, inflation, a destabilized world, a weak dollar, and potential bank failures, to name a few.
UGLY!
So why don't we crash?
Ever since 1987, I have NEVER taken off the notion of another crash off the table. As a hedge fund manager I ALWAYS had about ten percent of my fund in puts, which was expensive, expensive insurance. But they are as good a bet as insurance is for your home or your car. Except I took out so much that when things went bad I made money, and that doesn't happen with Allstate (ALL - commentary - Cramer's Take).
I also believed that you should run with many long call/short common positions that have been outlined endlessly here on these pages. If we get to 1050 on the S&P, which is what RBS is predicting, then you would do incredibly well once the price of the common went below the strike price.
So, run scared. Always run scared. That just makes sense. It is why I say in Stay Mad for Life that you should ALWAYS have cash -- something most individuals don't have -- because of a possible crash.
Now, lets address the notion of a crash head on. The 1987 crash, when we look back, was totally mechanical: the machines ran amok, kind of like the machine guns against men in WWI. We were overmatched. But there was nothing wrong with the economy at all and we bounced back FAST. The Fed endlessly pumped money in to help.
9/11? Big crash. But global economies were stronger than we thought and the Fed got its flood gates opened again. It worked.
We came back.
Of course,we have had lots of internal crashes: Nasdaq 5000 to Nasdaq teens! Still no come back.
But that brings me to why I am not as concerned as other times about a crash. Stocks never came back after the 2000 dot.bomb because stocks didn't belong at the high levels they reached.
Now, we have lots of stocks that are simply doing nothing and getting cheaper and cheaper all of the time, but are not losing money. Stocks that are at 12-14 times earnings, of which there are so many, aren't expensive enough to crash. Other stocks, the Cokes (KO - commentary - Cramer's Take)and the Pepsis (PEP - commentary - Cramer's Take), at 18 times earnings, don't impress me as "crashable" as there are too many buyers of thesestocks if they break down to 14-15 times earnings.
The banks? I keep harping on to 1990 because we had a 25% decline then because of an absolute destruction of the savings and loan industry--only Washington Mutual (WM - commentary - Cramer's Take)really survived. Many many banks failed.
And much of the market rallied in the face of the destruction.
We are now on the verge of the destruction phase with a bunch of banks just hanging on. I say, so what. We have slowed the process so we can deal with it. There's lots of liquidity for these crummy banks so they may not even go under. Which is too bad because they sure feel like Japan in the 1990s, when a lot of awful banks were allowed to survive.
I simply think that the 1990 scenario remains on the table and that can lead to a 25% percent decline over time. We are about half way there or further for many stocks.
Crash?
No, just more of the same with extreme bouts of selling followed by recovery UNTIL THE HOUSING MARKET RIGHTS ITSELF and OIL STABILIZES AT WHATEVER PRICE IT STABILIZES AT.
That's what I foresee. Nothing fancier.
So to review: most stocks are protected by realistic valuations. Oil and housing will solve themselves over the next year and the banking system will reinvent itself.
Just not enough there to take us down fast.
But a lot could take us down slowly. And that's where we are until the big issues of oil and housing turn.
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rffrydr
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| Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2008 9:59 pm Post subject: |
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Cramer's got Cramer's number:
One by one, the patients on the critical list get swallowed up or get cash-infused. This morning's news about Washington Mutual (WM - commentary - Cramer's Take) getting the giant slug of cash it needs -- albeit at ridiculously low levels -- takes that hugely dangerous situation off the hazard list that could have derailed this market.
Think about all of the entities that have been saved: Countrywide (CFC - commentary - Cramer's Take) by Bank of America (BAC - commentary - Cramer's Take), MBIA (MBI - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Ambac (ABK - commentary - Cramer's Take) by cash raises in the open markets, Citigroup (C - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Merrill (MER - commentary - Cramer's Take) by sovereign funds, Bear (BSC - commentary - Cramer's Take) by JPMorgan (JPM - commentary - Cramer's Take) (although at a high cost!), Lehman (LEH - commentary - Cramer's Take) by the preferred issue, UBS (UBS - commentary - Cramer's Take) by the rights offering ... All of those could have caused another calamity.
All that leaves is the semi-majors: CIT (CIT - commentary - Cramer's Take), E*Trade (ETFC - commentary - Cramer's Take), Nat City (NCC - commentary - Cramer's Take), Fifth Third (FITB - commentary - Cramer's Take), Huntington Bancshares (HBAN - commentary - Cramer's Take). None of these is big enough to pose any systemic risk to the system. In fact, the only systemic risk at this point might be all the credit default insurance policies taken out by hedge funds that are shrinking fast and are no doubt causing huge losses for short funds that we don't know about yet. I am not counting potential private equity losses here, I just don't think they will be all that big; at least if they are, they will simply be par for the course of a recession and nothing more.
This ongoing disposal of the big problems out there may be why so much of the market looks so much better than it did just a few weeks ago. It will be increasingly obvious that we caught the bottom in this cycle with the Bear collapse, which engendered more fear than any event I can recall since Long Term Capital.
With that floor comes the first serious attempt to cheaply pick up assets that are stuck on the books at the big hedge firms and banks and brokers.
Remember that the serious default levels are for HELOC vintage 2005-2007, which is just a total disaster no matter what kind of package. BBB paper put out by Ditech (DITC - commentary - Cramer's Take), Novastar (NOVS - commentary - Cramer's Take), Ameriquest, American Home Mortgage and Fremont General (FMT - commentary - Cramer's Take) is also a disaster. Whoever owns that stuff is going to take another hit down.
But the price discovery that is going on in all of the other paper -- A, alt-A and higher -- is revealing a rate of return that makes it so all of these vulture funds can swoop down and make some money.
Of course, the big worry at this point will shift to house price depreciation. The package that the Senate passed last week ensures that there is going to be continued deterioration given the lack of a big FHA commitment -- the most necessary part of any package -- and an encouraging of the homebuilder industry to keep pumping out homes with that tax credit that will keep them alive.
Given the weakness in employment and given the lack of decline in mortgage rates (in part because of no FHA involvement and in part because there is a glut of Fannie Mae (FNM - commentary - Cramer's Take) paper), there is little possibility of a cessation in decline.
All of that means that we will not be able to shoot up thousands of points, although we are likely to go much higher as the flood of liquidity keeps coming.
The bottom line is simple: We are in better shape than we have been in a year. If we catch a bottom in the price of housing, there's very little to stop this market from hitting new highs, especially because so many stocks yield so much more than Treasuries.
Random musings: Monster price target raises by Goldman on Mosaic (MOS - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Potash (POT - commentary - Cramer's Take). I totally agree with them. The ag bull market is totally alive and well. POT remains my fave. ... The new iteration of "Beat the Street" is fantastic -- it is the first one where you actually have to do more than pick one stock, which proves nothing.
At the time of publication, Cramer was long Goldman Sachs.
Q.E.D.
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