Forget About Daybook Investing

The media tells us to worry about events on the calendar. Today, the market refused to listen.

Author:: Jim Cramer
Publish date:: Mar 4, 1999 4:35 PM EST

Looks like it is the media that is fixated on the unemployment number, not the buyers. Maybe we are finally coming to our senses about "daybook" investing.

What is daybook investing? That's when we all feel frozen because the media tells us to be worried about a particular event on the calendar. All week we had this "crucial unemployment" number hanging over us, but in the end, it simply is not that crucial. The whole point of

Alan Greenspan's

last Humphrey-Hawkins testimony was that the correlation between the need to raise rates and tomorrow's number is practically nil.

But don't tell that to the people who write the news copy. They know nobody is ever going to find fault with them for saying "people don't want to buy ahead of the crucial number." They have total nonaccountability. They can scare us, frighten us, do whatever the heck they want to us and nobody says a thing.

That's why today was so gratifying. The market didn't care. How liberating.

In the meantime, the breadth of the market got better throughout the day, and I love it when the financials, the bank index if you will, takes the lead. That's healthy; that's what I like. That's what I want to see.

I still feel anything but personal computers is the right call.

Random musings:

Both the outlier financial papers,

USA Today

and the

Financial Times

, keep trying to marry

AT&T

(T) - Get Report

with

AOL

(AOL)

. Maybe once and for all the story will be spiked.

To me, since I knew it wasn't going to happen, I used the downdraft to buy more AOL. (Again, if you hate AOL, don't email me. Short it to me. It will be much sweeter if you are right and far less acerbic!)

James J. Cramer is manager of a hedge fund and co-founder of TheStreet.com. At the time of publication, the fund was long AOL, although positions can change at any time. Under no circumstances does the information in this column represent a recommendation to buy or sell stocks. Cramer's writings provide insights into the dynamics of money management and are not a solicitation for transactions. While he cannot provide investment advice or recommendations, he invites you to comment on his column by sending an email to letters@thestreet.com.