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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Jim Cramer Blog Buy Citi on the Deal 12/10/2009 7:04 AM EST This one'll make you a bundle by 2012.
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