Jim Cramer's Best Blogs

Jim Cramer fills his blog on RealMoney every day with his up-to-the-minute reactions to what's happening in the market and his legendary ahead-of-the-crowd ideas. This week he blogged on:

• insidious rumors about an imminent bank failure,
• the bears' frustration over a sturdy retail sector, and
• tech's quiet resurgence.

Click here for information on RealMoney, where you can see all the blogs, including Jim Cramer's -- and reader comments -- in real time.

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Nasty Rumors
Posted at 12:58 p.m. EDT, Sept. 1, 2009

Aha, a reason to sell off! Some dastardly rumor of a "bank failure" or a "bank bailout" including emergency meetings in Washington and a panicked FDIC. Now that's an irrefutable rumor that can deck pretty much everything. It's out of the blue and gives us a reason to ring the register, and panic and short!

Throughout the myriad sell calls, there's been nothing but ethereal logic: real estate not really bottoming, the "coming" commercial real estate crash, the "bear market" of China and the president's anti-capitalist agenda. All fine reasons to sell, but not anything to dump and "get out now" for.

Ah, but a bank failure... Something more than just a Corus (CORS Quote) bank -- how can that be still trading? -- or an ignored judgment of worthlessness about Fannie (FNM Quote) or Freddie (FRE Quote) or AIG (AIG Quote) -- tell me the latter shouldn't have issued 20 million shares when it had the chance! -- now that's a reason to pile on!

Until it is clarified, until we find out a) there is no failure, which means vicious snapback or b) the failure is of the Corus level, which means mild snapback, or c) the failure is of a TARP bank with lots of share, which means a quick drop to below Dow 9000 if not lower, I think that buying anything other than defensives (we are buying Procter (PG Quote)) makes little to no sense, because the rumor mill is working too well and the lack of players makes the impact and velocity too powerful to ignore and too compelling to sidestep, which, of course, means you should sell.

At the time of publication, Cramer was long Procter & Gamble.