Cramer on Bears in the Press

How WRONG can you get?

That's the question most traders ask about the way the press has covered the greatest bull market in history. As a hedge fund manager, running $220 million, I know that to be on the wrong side of the market for too long is nothing short of catastrophic to my business. Yet, today's papers are typical of the wholesale lack of acknowledgment that a great bull market is going on.

The closest The Wall Street Journal could come to giving the outrageous rally we had last week its due is an Abreast of the Market column entitled "Bullish Market has Some Investors Sweating," in which Suzanne McGee has rounded up some of Wall Street's reigning bulls, notably Merrill's Chuck Clough, Goldman's Abby Joseph Cohen and Gruntal's Joe Battipaglia--a personal favorite of mine from his accurate CNBC sessions--and dressed them as bears to put a fright into us all. Please. Halloween was weeks ago.

I guess the Dow has to go up 500 points in a week to get the attention of these guys.

Don't look to Barron's for recognition either. The team at the nation's preeminent business weekly got off the bandwagon at Dow 1100 (or thereabouts) making it exceedingly awkward to climb back on now--although they've been using that excuse for 5000 points!

Nonetheless, is there any doubt that the market is going higher as long as Ursa Major himself, Alan Abelson, stays negative? But, light at the end of the tunnel department take note: in this week's edition he only invokes 1987 once, and nary a a mention of 1929. Get me rewrite!!

The point of all this fingerpointing is how the conventional on-line press has been on the wrong side of this market from the get-go. I can't afford to be. My investors will just take the money away. It helps that I've been bullish; last year at Dow 4800 I called in my New York Magazine column for 6500 by late 1996, and it looks like we'll do that easily at this pace.

But what the press doesn't get is that it's a rare moment in time when it looks easy, safe, good or cheap to invest. There is always something wrong with the firmament, whether it be corporate earnings, or inflation or valuation, or whatever.

Take Abelson: he's always found something wrong with the current market, and invariably he's right about the problems. But investing is alot like war. The other side always looks intimidating. When I read Abelson I think of General George McClellan, the Union's infamous by-the-book general who would never pounce unless everything was perfect. It never was and he never did. So Lincoln sacked him and brought in Grant (not Jim, another McClellan type) because "he fights."

The Union won with Grant, we'd still be two pathetic countries with the other guy. I'd rather read Grant than McClellan anyday. So should you.

James Cramer manages a hedge fund and is co-chairman of The Street

>To order reprints of this article, click here: Reprints