Granville, Cramer and the Second Coming

Editor's Note: This column by Doug Kass is a special bonus for TheStreet.com readers. It appeared on Street Insight on Jan 12. To sign up for Street Insight, please click here.

---

Market Gurus Have Their Moments

More than anything else over the last 20 years, I have learned that financial popularity has its seasons, so it is important to explore the Joe Granville/Jim Cramer parallel. Like Granville, Jim "El Capitan" Cramer has become a market guru, and investors, traders and viewers have had an animated response to his Granville-like wild gestures and animated personality. He has recently graced the cover of BusinessWeek, and, like Joe, he is so influential that the mere mention of a stock on his CNBC "Mad Money" program causes an instantaneous response (with some stocks rising as much as 10% in overnight trading).

"Sell Everything" Reaches (Nearly) Everyone

Twenty-five years ago, Kansas City-based market technician Joe Granville was seen as a Wall Street prophet. He was one of the first market technicians to use on-balance volume as a means of predicting stock prices. Under the sponsorship of an unknown brokerage firm, Arnold Securities, Granville began to tour the world, giving a series of traveling seminars, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He had a remarkable run of prescient market calls that resulted in international recognition. His "Sell Everything" message to subscribers in January 1981 made headlines around the world; the Dow Jones Industrials Average fell 2.5% on the next day and 1.5% on the day after that.

Where Are the Clowns? Send in the Clowns

Granville's fame and seminars grew in size and sensationalism. Toward the end of his skein, his presentations were staged in huge hotel auditoriums, and attendance was always standing-room only. The crowds were boisterous in response to the circus-like festivities, which typically included belly dancers, a band and often clowns.

Granville made a dramatic entrance in each of these "seminars," dressed in a tuxedo as he walked down a long aisle while the crowds cheered the messiah's next coming. His antics were wild, in marked contrast to the more subtle presentations then seen on Wall Street. Once, on the stage of one of his seminars, Granville dropped his tuxedo pants and pointed to stock symbols printed on his boxer shorts, ending with a delighted cry of, "And here's Hughes Tool!"