Sometimes, You Just Have to Relent

Sometimes you just feel beaten into being positive. You just say, "OK, enough, I will accept the positives as they are being put out, not as I believe they are."

That's how I felt yesterday about Freddie Mac (FRE - commentary - Cramer's Take). The company put out financials yesterday that looked better than expected, and for once I didn't question whether they were.

I didn't because the earnings from so many of the feckless players -- the Fannies (FNM - commentary - Cramer's Take), the Washington Mutuals (WM - commentary - Cramer's Take) the MBIAs (MBI - commentary - Cramer's Take) and the Ambacs (ABK - commentary - Cramer's Take) -- are all being greeted with a bizarre positive response, so bizarre that I bought into the "better than expected" rhetoric because I don't want to fight the value guys who are in control right now.

Elsewhere on the site, Doug Kass has been putting up some very strong arguments that numbers from the likes of Freddie are less than meets the eye.

You know what? He's probably right. But when you get to the point where the big money has decided that there are just enough positives to make them come in and there aren't enough negatives to keep them out, you just have to join them -- you can't beat them.

I feel this way because in 1990, when I was inflexible and wanted to tell the bulls, "No, no, no, it is not over, there's much more downside," I started losing lots of money. I saw quarters like FRE's and decided to "see through" them and stay short.

After a few of them, I just said, "OK, I have made a lot of money shorting this group, I am now not only betting against the Fed, but I am betting against every value guy in the store."

I covered, and in some cases I went long.

I made a lot of money.

It wasn't "rigorous" to do. But it was right. And that's how we get paid.

Random musings: CBS (CBS - commentary - Cramer's Take) to buy CNet (CNET - commentary - Cramer's Take)? Les Moonves likes it as profitable and growing, but I always think of it as barely profitable or loss making and not growing. To each his own.

At the time of publication, Cramer had no positions in the stocks mentioned.

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