A New Year, A New Role for JJC

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What would you do if I told you that you could catch a 20% move by being long for a couple of days? What if I told you that you have to ignore the naysayers after the initial rally, that this snapback was different and long-lasting and shouldn't be shorted, unlike all the rest of the snapbacks which were simply bear traps waiting to destroy your capital?

Well, that's what just happened. Since Nov. 30, when Todd Harrison pulled off his bear suit and he and I told you that the short side was no longer the money side. The market, as defined by the Nasdaq, has now rallied 20%. The one-day wonder rally melded into something stronger and more lasting. Nothing's harder than turning bearish, except for turning bullish again after it was so cozy in that warm bear den. You don't want to get out. It is just so cozy.

But sadly, I am a realist about how much that call is actually worth. If TheStreet.com were a brokerage house, you would do more commission business with us for that great trading call. If we were a newsletter, one of those paper sheets that comes off a fax machine or in the mail, we would probably double in circulation and raise our fees. But we are stuck on the Web, where analysis just doesn't get paid for and trading calls, even the best trading calls, are never rewarded because, alas, there aren't enough traders left out there. Too many of them levered into the downturn and got blown away before the Fed signaled that once again it was OK to risk your capital. The majority of you are no longer traders; you are 401k folks, part-timers, people who are picking a stock or two for kids or are looking for ways NOT to trade. Some of you still want the trading call, to which I say, you have the best natural trader I have ever seen, Todd Harrison, making those trading calls.

Most of you, however, want a markets commentator who is not from the Church of What Is Happening Now. You want a markets commentator who can help you make money over a longer-term period, tax-effectively. That's why we at TheStreet.com want to have something important to help not just the minute-to-minute traders (and believe me, we will always be the best at that because that's in the site's technological nature), but also to help the 40 million owners of stocks in more passive forms. We are a brand that has earned your trust for informative insights that can make you money over the short-term and we must now find ways to make you money over the longer-term.

I have read hundreds of thousands of your emails over the course of the last couple of years and I have heard the praise of what we do right and the laments about we could do so much more of. Because of my fiduciary duty to my partners in my hedge fund, I have not spent enough time developing products for and offering insights to nontrader types, even though for 14 years we ran our fund bifurcated, half trading and half-long-term.

In three weeks I will be moving over to TheStreet.com, where I work with the leadership over there to help build a suite of products for the everyday investor, with a philosophy toward wealth-building over the long-term. I just didn't have the time or the inclination to develop these things as I battled it out in the trading trenches every minute.

Sure, you might not get my momentary insights, something that the hedge funds have told me they have capitalized on, but the ordinary folk we had in mind when we set up TheStreet.com can't tap into those insights anyway, because of time pressures and because, alas, they are not full-time traders. But you will still have that insight from Todd, and, I know from working next to him for the last year and trading with him for 10 years, that he has a better trading call than I ever will. I don't even know if I would have given up my day-to-day job so easily if I thought the site wouldn't have access to a great trading call. But there is no need for two of them. Todd and I agree enough that we are simply hammering home the same nail day after day.

Instead, I want to build something more lasting, something where I am on the same page as you, something where I think and act like the vast majority of you who don't trade hundreds of times a month. That's what I have been working on, tapping my insights from all my years of managing money for the super-wealthy, honing a model that has made them hundreds of millions of dollars over the long term.

That's what awaits you when I begin my gig as a markets commentator at TheStreet.com in the next three weeks. I can't wait. At last I will have something for the everyday person who I wanted so badly to get in the game in a way that is equal to the big boys. I hope you will stay tuned.

Random musings: Give the gift of RealMoney.com to friends or offer subscriptions to those at school who need it if they are going to go out into the real world. You know how important that second revenue stream is for us and you know how much money we can help you make. Seems like a good synergy, doesn't it?