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Expert urges some to pull out
Financial expert Jim Cramer appeared on the Today Show yesterday and urged investors to take what some might deem as dramatic measures to protect their investments in a tumultuous stock market.
“I thought about this all weekend,” Cramer told [NBC's Ann] Curry. “I do not want to say these things on TV.
“Whatever money you may need for the next five years, please take it out of the stock market right now, this week. I do not believe that you should risk those assets in the stock market right now.”
Cramer, who came to these conclusions by calculating individual Dow stocks and estimating how far they might yet fall, believes the bank lending default crisis could bring “as much as a 20 percent decrease in the stock market.”
But what about those of us with more than five years and plenty of assets? According to Cramer, “I think what you have to do, if you can withstand it, is just ride it out.”
back to top20 Comments to “Expert urges some to pull out”
I don’t have plenty of assets, but whatever I have will likely go into my estate. As long as they pay the dividend, I don’t worry about the price.
I’m no financial advisor, but my inclination is, if you don’t need it now, don’t bother it now. OTOH, I rode Pan Am almost to the bottom. It didn’t hurt me, but it irritated me. I got over it.
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I’m happy I’m invested for the long run and do not plan on taking anything out for 30 years or so.
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I rode USAir (and Delta) to the bottom recently. Nice flights. Nice landings. No recalled irritants. I never got to ride PanAm. Or wait a minute. Maybe I did. Mexico City to DFW. Yeah, I think that was PanAm. Rode that one all the way to the bottom as well.
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I’m going to let it ride as long as I can unless something untoward happens — and it might.
This is a great time to buy, though, if you have a little extra floating around which I don’t.
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If he didn’t want to say that on TV, why did he say it on TV?
Live on less than you make, give back to God, diversify, check your spending patterns and make sure you’re purchasing needs not wants, make radical cuts when necessary, be open to unusual ways to save money (a border anyone? We’ve had renters in and out of our house for years–always friends through church, however). I wrote a whole novel about that, too.
And if you don’t understand the investment, house purchase, loan docs, etc.– don’t sign papers until you do or, maybe better yet, don’t do it at all.
There’s no free lunch.
You aren’t owed a house.
Many people have lived their whole lives in rentals without any ill effects.
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
The love of money is the root of all evil (and you can love money even if you don’t have it).
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Remember folks, Jim Cramer is the “financial expert” who told everyone on his CNBC show to buy Bear Stearns stock and that it was fine just days before the bottom fell out of the company. He’s the “televangelist” of Wall Street in my opinion.
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When I heard this news, the commenters (I’m sorry I don’t remember who they were) said Cramer makes a living saying bold things like this, so take it with a big grain of salt.
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Michelle’s words are golden.
If I could expand on it I’d do so. As it is, should I ever be asked to give a valedictory graduation speech I will shamelessly plagiarize her text (with some Solomonic proverbs tossed in just to irritate Barry Linn and his crowd!)
Additional pearls of undeniable truths? Let me hear’em!
In the army after any type of sustained training we do an AAR. (After Action Review) We even did AARs after mascals at our Aid Station in Diyala province. So I ask all the big finance whiz kids:
What happened? What did we hope would happen? Why did what happened happen?
How can we avert it or at least do better in the future?
I like Jim Cramer but I’m also turning to Dave Ramsey as much as possible. And I spoze I might need to read or listen more to Clark Howard.
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I’m with you PhilW. I listened to a guy talk about getting into precious metals. Then they finally identified him as a gold/medals dealer.
Anyone remember the line from “You’ve Been Left Behind”?
..”the days grew cold, a loaf of bread would buy a bag of gold”
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Cramer was acknowledging just last week that he’d made a big error in something — but I don’t remember what. I wouldn’t take the advice of someone like that anyway, but it’s a crime to let this guy have a forum. For once, I agree with Anlir.
Michelle’s advice is priceless. I’ve been praying for our country. I know others are, too.
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I wasn’t sure who y’all were even talking about, until I saw the linked picture. Oh, yes: Shouting Guy with Rolled-Up Sleeves from CNBC. Never listen to him.
Speaking of buying gold, Glen Beck’s radio program was on drive-time in my area (until it mysteriously disappeared a few weeks ago) and he was advocating the same thing. And then he’d do promo spots for gold dealers. Nice.
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Sawgunner, #8. The answers:
What happened? Nobody really knows yet, that’s the problem.
What did we hope would happen? That it would go on forever, at least until we were our of office.
Why did what happened happen? Because we trusted our representatives to represent us. Also, because we thought there is a free lunch, and we could re-sell all those bad loans before they turned bad.
How can we avert it in the future? We can’t. We will muddle through and hope it doesn’t go bad on our watch. Remember, “Greed is good.”
I hope this helps, but I’m afraid it won’t.
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This gold conversation is a bit OT, but I have a lot of curiosity about it. All the radio talkers except Ramsey are talking it up, then doing commercials for it. They all say that gold is great because it has intrinsic value.
So, my question to you financial types is, Why should gold have any intrinsic value? It only has value because someone wants to buy it. Land has intrinsic value. Gasoline and food have intrinsic value. But, gold?
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#13 StuBob, it has intrinsic value cuz chicks dig it when you got a gold grill to smile at’em wit.
Chas, Congress will bloviate and maybe a few more CEO types will be socked in the nose (literally or judicially) but the same bonehead Congress folks who hatched this big magilla will be re-elected back to their office.
Doncha wish we had term limits? At least that way a different crop of idiots would have the opp to bungle-up the entire shebang!
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Anyone read the WSJ Opinionjournal dot com today? Great comparsion of Clinton in 1992 (”Middle class tax cut!”) and OBama 2008.
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calculating individual Dow stocks and estimating how far they might yet fall
If this guy could really estimate future stock value he would be a billionaire.
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Live by the experts, die by the experts.
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StuBob,
That is a very perceptive question! I always get a chuckle when people advocate return to a gold standard because “gold has value” whereas paper currency doesn’t. People who argue that line of reasoning basically would flunk any introductory course in monetary economics.
Even with gold as a standard, most monetary balances that people have – checking accounts, savings accounts, what have you – exist as numbers in the ledger books of banks and other financial institutions.
I can still remember the quote at the beginning of one of the articles we had to read back in the day (Trade Credit and the Money Market, by Arthur B. Laffer © 1970 )
Presently, of course, we find that bonds and derivatives backed by pools of mortgages are pretty much illiquid.
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“Money” exists as something of value only to the extent that people agree that it has value. What we agree to call “money” for the most part is only a symbol.
A few things have real value in that they help us survive physically, but they are difficult to transport. We need food and water to survive, but it is not very practical to carry around food or water as a means of exchange, though in a situation such as Katrina, food and water literally become a medium of value.
Most of the time we agree (without really thinking about the agreement) to use symbols of value. In times of social breakdown (as we are having currently experiencing), the underlying symbolism becomes more apparent. One of the weaknesses of the money system is that it is easily undermined by “inflation” and “disbelief.”
The value of gold is that a limit is set by supply by nature. There is only so much gold available in the world. Except as a item used in industry, gold has no “real” value. In a time of famine, you can’t eat gold.
Humans have such an immense capacity for self delusion, they jump from the natural scarcity of gold to thinking it has “real” value.
The “best” scenario I have for our present crisis is that we are going into a Second Great Depression, which I (as a compulsive smart-aleck) call the Greater Depression. The worse scenario I have is that we are in the initial stages of the collapse of human civilization.
Although I don’t consider Mormonism as a very serious belief system as a religion, the “survivalism” aspect of that particular belief system has a practical value. Romney may not have been a candidate with much traction, but if he’s got his survival stash of supplies, he may end up having the last laugh.
Although I consider the belief that the world will end on 2012 as superstition, I do have to admit that the coincidence that we find ourselves in immense international crisis only three years or so from 2012 an amazing coincidence.
Your mileage, etc.
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Pulling out is not a reliable method of birth control. Abstinence works better.
However, advocating abstinence has not proven very effective as a method of changing other people’s behavior.
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