It occurred to me last night, while watching one of the myriad permabulls on television, that if there is justice, most of these bulls will be forced to morph into bears in order for this market to turn around.
I just don't think you can have smug tech fund mutual fund managers and strategists who were bullish all the way down come out alive before this round of battle with the bears is over. Irony is not an investment concept. Neither is
O. Henry style of writing.
But come on, do you think that the people who loved it all the way down are credible? Do you think they can and should keep their jobs? The whole way up I heard the catcalls for the permabears. By the time we got to
Nazz 5000 only the meanspirited "I will be a bear until I die" types stayed in and
none of them were running money. That got taken away. No major strategist stayed bearish and kept his job.
We now want to see the permabulls give up the ghost. We want to see mutual fund managers fired. We want to see permabulll hedge fund managers strung up on proverbial meathooks. We want to see the always-calm, always-bullish strategists go into a new line of work.
That's integral to a bottom, if you are looking for a bottom -- much more integral than an order turn at
Cisco (CSCO Quote - Cramer on CSCO - Stock Picks) or
Lucent(LU Quote - Cramer on LU - Stock Picks).
Will it happen? I can't believe it hasn't happened yet. I can't believe that fund managers who are down 50% aren't being let go right now. I can't believe the permabull strategists aren't being called in by their betters and being asked, "Do you have any rigor at all? You buried our client base in bad stuff." Look for these things to happen in the next two weeks. If they don't, then I history teaches us very little about this business.
Jim Cramer
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