Maven: Ford's Fairy-Tale Wedding

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We're only two days out of the summer lull and The Business Press Maven already feels like a baited bull. Here's why, and I warn you, that tie of yours better not be red.

There's no better investment maxim than "sell on the wedding, buy at the wake." This basically means that when everyone is happy, celebrating and full of promise, sell. When bitter tears are being shed, buy. Got that? Well, if you've been gobbling up Ford(F Quote - Cramer on F - Stock Picks) shares in light of the giddy, pussycat coverage that came in the wake (the other kind of wake) of the press conference announcing the appointment of Alan Mulally, Boeing(BA Quote - Cramer on BA - Stock Picks) veteran, to Ford's top spot -- eh, you don't get it.

See, in the world of business, the press conference is the closest thing there is to a wedding. Everyone is happy and scripted and hope for any type of merger or shifty strategy -- whoops, sorry, shift in strategy -- seems high.

Moreover, the business media never under-functions so reliably as at a press conference. A good spread of free Danish pastries and coffee sometimes lays siege to the media's better judgment. But the larger issue is that the default mode of thought for business journalists is on-one-hand-on-the-other. Speak to both sides, split the difference.

But at many press conferences (see Time Warner(TWX Quote - Cramer on TWX - Stock Picks)/AOL, which produced some of the most misguided business coverage since The Business Press Maven was thumb-sucking his way through middle school), both sides are on the same team.

And even when the press conference is not about a merger but an appointment, the business media falls for the new face and new storyline that all the practiced participants in the press conference are peddling. A good business journalist wants to speak to someone who digresses from the party line, and they have to be hunted down outside the press conference.

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