The Cutting Room: Super Bowl Schmuperbowl & the Crash of the Tech Titans
O.K., so "crash" isn't a great word to use around Wall Street, but it was, as
Jim Cramer
puts it on "TheStreet.com" on
Fox News Channel
this weekend, "a shattering week for the high-multiple bulls."
And that was clear by the chatter in the green room this Friday night. Our show's guest,
John Manley
of
Salomon Smith Barney
, had hardly removed his overcoat (he was waiting for his tear ducts to thaw) when he began to spout market statistics at
Herb Greenberg
: "Do you realize this was the worst January since 1990 and the first time we haven't been above water in the
S&P 500
since '78."
TSC
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The veteran analyst and the seasoned Wall Street reporter then began to compare "average-Joe-in-the-Bull market" stories about cabbies and coat-check girls looking for stock tips. "We're all gonna miss money," quipped Manley. (Cue the nervous laughter.)
Herb and John's banter was peppered with comments from our peripatetic Editor-in-Chief,
Dave Kansas
(who's in the habit of flying into the green room minutes before we tape, stripping as he goes, to don yet another brand spanking new, still-in-the-wrapper blue shirt). "It was
really
bad today," huffed Kansas, more than once.
Jim Cramer blew back in shortly thereafter to mark his third appearance on
Fox News Channel
that day. He'd begun the day much like he does every Friday with an early morning spot on "Fox & Friends," then it's off to manage his hedge fund and write about what he sees for
TheStreet.com
Web site, only to return after the market closes to chime in with Neil Cavuto's crowd at 5:00 p.m. After Cavuto, Cramer will frequently take a walk, grab a bite and prepare for our show. He's highly concentrated E-N-E-R-G-Y and the buzz in the green room always rises audibly when he joins the mix.
By the time the terrific crew at
Fox
got 'em all powdered, primped (I must say there's something very gratifying about seeing these guys get their hair "poofed"), wired for sound and onto the set, they were humming. Unfortunately, so was our audio and the momentum was interrupted by a 10-minute break as everyone scrambled to find the source of the strange voices haunting our set. (It turned out to be the sound of another show creeping in.)
Not to worry. When we finally got under way, Cramer's first comment cranked up the volume once again. When our host
Brenda Buttner
asked him what he thought of tech now, Cramer responded with something that sounded like, "mmmmm" accompanied by his now trademark wave of the arms.
Cramer then declared
Qualcomm's
(QCOM) - Get Report
fantastic run "over" and rattled off a laundry list of what he bought and sold Friday. "I was selling my
Red Hot B2B's," he said.
But he bought some beaten up "old tech" like
Microsoft
(MSFT) - Get Report
,
Intel
(INTC) - Get Report
and
Sun Microsystems
(SUNW) - Get Report
.
Manley and Greenberg both expressed concern over an "out-of-control economy" and overconfident consumers, while Kansas asked if Cramer believed a continued move to stocks with lower price-to-earnings was in order. He does.
The discussion ended in a rare moment of harmony on the "TSC" set, with the panel generally agreeing that a real return to value could be expected Monday. "I bought
Fannie Mae
into the chaos. I bought
J.P. Morgan
(JPM) - Get Report
into the chaos. I did not buy the Qualcomms," explained Cramer.
The tone of the show took a decisive turn toward the lighthearted when
Gary B. Smith
and
Adam Lashinsky
"pooh-poohed" this weekend's Super Bowl in favor of their own "Stock Super Bowl." The two faced-off over which stock is the better buy: St. Louis'
Anheuser-Busch
(BUD) - Get Report
(who's product is an admitted favorite of Gary B's) or Tennessee's
FedEx
(FDX) - Get Report
.
But my favorite part of the show was "Predictions." (Oh, by the way, I work with these guys each week to get the show on the air. I'm not the oft-quoted, great-and-powerful producer,
Gary Schreier
, of course, just his meek-and-mild associate producer.) Predictions is usually my favorite part of the show, but before we taped Friday, Gary and I received two diametrically opposed predictions about the same stock, and we were looking forward to seeing the predictors' reactions.
The stock is
Dell
(DELL) - Get Report
. Herb Greenberg thinks more bad news will eventually drive shares down to 20, while Adam Lashinsky predicts that the PC maker's shares will soar to 70 before the end of the year. During the taping, Lashinsky's smile made his "I hate to disagree with Herb Greenberg" comment appear somewhat disingenuous. But all Greenberg wanted to know was, "Adam, is that after it's gone to 20 or before?"
