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RealMoney.com: Jim Cramer Blog
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Here's Why This Market Keeps Stalling

By Jim Cramer
RealMoney Columnist

12/10/2009 10:37 AM EST
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Why is it so hard for this market to stay up? Why doesn't it just rally and stay rallying? Let's go over what's stopping any big move in its tracks, with specific examples:

 
  1. Wells Fargo (WFC - commentary - Trade Now), JPMorgan (JPM - commentary - Trade Now), Bank of America (BAC - commentary - Trade Now) and Goldman Sachs (GS - commentary - Trade Now). For lack of a better term, these are American finance. They can't get out from under. As long as there are fits and starts and one step forward one and a half-step back, people simply won't trust the market. I keep hoping we de-link, and we can't seem to do so, especially with the Citigroup (C - commentary - Trade Now) sword of Damocles over our heads. .No one cares that foreclosure activity has now fallen for the fourth straight month. People feel that bad loans have not peaked, even as there is so much empirical evidence that they have turned from credit cards to mortgages to motor credits.
  2. Tech -- the percentage of people who have one foot out of the door at all times despite empirical evidence that things are better and that there is real demand completely mystifies me. Almost every report is greeted with jaundice. No one trusts Intel (INTC - commentary - Trade Now), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ - commentary - Trade Now), Texas Instruments (TXN - commentary - Trade Now), Cypress Semiconductor (CY - commentary - Trade Now), Altera (ALTR - commentary - Trade Now), Xilinx (XLNX - commentary - Trade Now), Novellus (NVLS - commentary - Trade Now), Analog Devices (ADI - commentary - Trade Now). They do trust Dell (DELL - commentary - Trade Now). Preannouncements of better-than-expected earnings are universally regarded as phony.
  3. People get confused by the bogus linkage of oil and the market and have still not understood that the vast majority of the very companies they are selling in the S&P will have shortfalls if oil climbs higher and that the retail consumer -- so big in this economy -- will cut back. So we have a totally counterintuitive world where we sell what we should be buying.
  4. Washington is simply on the screen too much. We aren't used to the intervention, and even when it is good, a la when Bernanke says no need to raise rates -- so good for the dividend stocks -- we don't relate it as good. Everything from Washington is viewed as bad -- even the good.
  5. Worries about giving back the year vs. gunning the year have totally overtaken this market. Fear is killing greed. When lock-in trumps buying more, you simply don't have enough new money coming in to make a difference. Stock fund outflows remain in the range of several billion dollars. No new money plus lock-in are really killers. The Investment Company Institute reports that stock funds had outflows of $2.27 billion this last week vs. $1.34 billion a year earlier.

If you can't convince people that these woes will go away, or if they don't go away, the rallies will always be sold. That makes any buying just too hard for many people who would otherwise want to be in. Hence the reluctance and the lack of follow-through that has accompanied the market since December began.

At the time of publication, Cramer was long JPM and GS.


Special note from Jim: You can learn my time-tested ways to trade smart, even in this market. All my latest thinking is in my brand new book, Getting Back to Even, which I'll send to you as part of a special promotion when you sign up for my Action Alerts PLUS service for a limited time. So if you sign up now, you'll get to see how I'm playing these stocks in my portfolio today, plus, I'll teach you how you can play these stocks to help your portfolio get back to even.

Cramer's Upcoming Book Signings

Tuesday, Dec. 15, 7:30 p.m. Border's, Westbury, Long Island (1260 Old Country Road)





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Jim Cramer is co-founder and chairman 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. To order Cramer's newest book -- "Jim Cramer's Stay Mad for Life: Get Rich, Stay Rich (Make Your Kids Even Richer)," click here. Click here to order "Mad Money: Watch TV, Get Rich," click here to order "Real Money: Sane Investing in an Insane World," click here to get "You Got Screwed!" and click here for Cramer's autobiography, "Confessions of a Street Addict." While he cannot provide personalized investment advice or recommendations, he appreciates your feedback and invites you to send comments by clicking here.

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