Welcome to Rumorville, Population: the Market

Want the bad news? Or the worse news? OK, bad news first: We tend to have whatever side the market is leaning to get exacerbated by the late-afternoon look.

Now the worse news: We have now breached Rumorville. What's Rumorville? That's what happened in the 1998 selloff and the 1990 selloff. A few well-placed calls and you can cause a run on even the best firms.

Today there was a run on Lehman Brothers' (LEH - commentary - Cramer's Take) stock. Did you see how easily it rolled over? Then Lehman refuted the rumor.

In the interim, it worked. So, if you are a bad guy you say, "Hey, let's buy the Goldman Sachs (GS - commentary - Cramer's Take) July 210 puts and play Lehman with it." Do you have any doubt that will succeed?

Of course, because the financials are almost always leaps of faith, this stuff can spread like wildfire. You can't do this to Occidental (OXY - commentary - Cramer's Take). You can't do it in Union Pacific (UNP - commentary - Cramer's Take), either. But you sure can do it to Citigroup (C - commentary - Cramer's Take) or Morgan Stanley (MS - commentary - Cramer's Take) or UBS (UBS - commentary - Cramer's Take).

Rumorville is a miserable place. I believe, judging by the incredible decline that I see in the homebuilders, that they too will soon be targets of those who say there is no liquidity.

Obviously, you could do the same to any mortgage-related entity; in fact, any lender. How about H&R Block (HRB - commentary - Cramer's Take)? Moody's (MCO - commentary - Cramer's Take)? PMI (PMI - commentary - Cramer's Take)? MGIC (MTG - commentary - Cramer's Take)? You get the picture. (Notice, I'm not saying, "We did this back at my old hedge fund." I have learned my lesson about being clear: I never did this garbage, but the hedge fund community did and does all the time.)

So, perhaps this time is different and the look at 2:45 p.m. EDT is terrific. But maybe it isn't different and we get another down 100 moment.

Wait. It's not worth it to be a hero.

At the time of publication, Cramer was long Goldman Sachs, Union Pacific and Citigroup.

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Jim Cramer is a director and co-founder of TheStreet.com. He contributes daily market commentary for TheStreet.com's sites and serves as an adviser to the company's CEO. Outside contributing columnists for TheStreet.com and RealMoney.com, including Cramer, may, from time to time, write about stocks in which they have a position. In such cases, appropriate disclosure is made. To see his personal portfolio and find out what trades Cramer will make before he makes them, sign up for Action Alerts PLUS. Watch Cramer on "Mad Money" weeknights on CNBC. Click here to order Cramer's latest book, "Mad Money: Watch TV, Get Rich," click here to order his book, "Real Money: Sane Investing in an Insane World," click here to get his second book, "You Got Screwed!" and click here to order Cramer's autobiography, "Confessions of a Street Addict." While he cannot provide personalized investment advice or recommendations, he invites you to send comments on his column by clicking here.

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