It’s time to give thanks. I want to give thanks to all of the traders out there who create opportunities every day with their scalping, their dumping, and their insistence that small caps stocks are going to roar or that midcaps will stall or that the “Magnificent Seven” are magnificent no more. I used to trade for a living. I was pretty good at it. I used to go on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” as a guest. Every Wednesday. Back then, anchor Mark Haines ruled the roost. Mark, now long since passed, was a glorious curmudgeon. I was trying to get TheStreet.com, the financial website that I had started three years before in 1996, a little more exposure. At that point, Disney had a stake in TheStreet.com, and part of the deal included two segments a week on “Good Morning America” about the economy and business. Those were serious shows before TikTok, Instagram, podcasts and streaming. We had just installed a television in the trading room because FNN, the Financial News Network, a somewhat helpful amalgam of programming, had been replaced by CNBC, a much more rigorous outfit. The keystone of the network? Haines, along with two foils, Joe Kernen and David Faber. “Squawk Box” filled the time slot now run by Kernen, Andrew Ross Sorkin and Becky Quick, whom I first brought over from The Wall Street Journal as the stand-in for my old friend Larry Kudlow, the other half of the duo called “Kudlow & Cramer.” Anchors could own stocks back then, before the post-dotcom purge conducted by lawyers who decided that disclosure wasn’t enough — that it couldn’t cure the taint of the trades done by on-air talent. Haines annoyed me. He was always buying the oils — loved Rowan and Transocean . He infuriated me with his smugness. So, I shot off emails as I screamed at the television when I knew he was off-base, arrogant son of a bitch that I was. Haines was cursory and clipped in his responses as befitting the way you would answer a pain-in-the-ass viewer. Then one day I got an email that changed pretty much everything. He wrote that if I thought I was so hot, such a good stock picker, I had to come on the show or stop emailing him. I got sheepish. I was conscious that I had been doing the hits on GMA, and they were fabulous. But I started thinking it might make more sense to promote TheStreet.com by co-hosting “Squawk Box.” I weighed about 205 pounds back then, thirty pounds more than now, and I had no hair. I told Haines that I didn’t know if he wanted a fat, bald, noisy sidekick for three hours. He came back and said that was okay, it would be one and done if I pissed him off. That was Haines. So, I came in hot. I wasn’t content to be a co-host. I wanted to be the host. I interrupted him when Haines said his name. I said this would be a different show, not like those before me, one that would tell it like it is, not some economic gasbag analysis. Shoot, I was like that even then. We proceeded to have a giant play of fun, a caustic, comical, angry, peeved three hours. At the end, still on air, Haines said, when are you coming back, and I knew I had passed the test. The next time I came on he said he had been thinking a lot about me and he realized that I wasn’t an investor. I was a trader, a fast trader, maybe the fastest ever. He said I had no loyalty whatsoever to anything or maybe anyone and that people needed to know that. That’s why my new name was “The Reverend Jim Bob of the Church of What’s Happening Now.” Except for a stint where I helped build Fox Business News, I became a fixture on CNBC until I got my own show, “Kudlow & Cramer.” I was always Reverend Jim Bob from my own church, and I was the exclamation point every week, a foil for all of the buy-and-holders that would fill up the time every other day of the week. In the twenty-six years since those appearances, many have joined my church, and now we have a network brimming with reverends of their own flock. They are fun, and opinionated — and they, too, have no more loyalty than you can throw their ideas out there only to experience the jarring discovery that was liked last time is now despised. No Charitable Trust consistency on these shows. No matter, they are as fun with a brilliant cast of characters with quick sermons, making themselves of apostates of their last appearances. These are the people who have helped create the notion of the new thesis with a shelf life less than that of whole milk left out on the picnic table on a hot day. They, as a collection, stoked to be as opinionated as Reverend Jim Bob, are constantly giving eulogies for whatever was so young and alive the day before. Everything, of course, hinges on whatever Federal Reserve governor spoke last because that might be the governor that matters or the most — or not. The torque of each trade is not even noticed anymore. But the wake that they cause? It’s enough to change the animal spirits as the network has taken on a major role each session. The sermons are all different, but I find there’s a preponderance of thought that revolves around two theses: (1) You have to sell the “Magnificent Seven” because they are now dead, and (2) you have to buy the Mag 7 because they have never been more in vogue, more alive, more able to bring home the bacon. I lost my church years ago, defrocked by the desire to teach through “Mad Money” and the Investing Club. I find these obits and Lazarus-like comebacks totally fatuous. There is no death, there isn’t even a near-death experience for the Mag 7 — individually Apple , Alphabet, Amazon , Meta Platforms , Microsoft , Nvidia, and Tesla . The Investing Club owns them all except Tesla. Yes, small caps or midcaps or the “Russell whatevers” get their mid-afternoons in the sun. Alphabet ‘s Google gets shot down by an antitrust official, and an Nvidia gets dinged by an ill-advised story about how its latest chips are overheating causing it to miss the quarter. Such a shame the latter is not true. But what are we supposed to do? I hear you: Didn’t you do that at TheStreet.com? Hmm, if we got it wrong, we owned it, or I would figuratively rip your lungs out. Here’s what the traders don’t understand: The Mag 7 doesn’t end. They are the stocks you reach for when there’s chatter that the big slowdown is here. A new crop comes in and buys them — not trade, but to invest in. Plus, index money fuel gets sprayed on them causing regular bonfires. The traders give us these opportunities. They don’t know how not to because things are always fluid. There’s always a new reason to sell, a new reason to buy. Sometimes in the same day. There’s no buyers’ or sellers’ remorse. Who has time for that? Here’s what, though, they are missing. These companies can’t be classified as a group of seven except by the con men who create ETFs (exchange-traded funds) for fees and nothing more. What the heck does a chip that helps accelerated computing (made by Nvidia) have to do with a consumer of that chip (take your pick of names because everyone wants as much as they get their hands on) who pays a fortune for it. What’s good for the goose is bad for the gander. They can all be pitted against each other. Some are counter-cyclical and get bought when they are literally pronounced dead. Others defy characterization. Against them are segments that go in and out of favor depending upon a missed quarter in the cohort or Fed speak meant to curse a segment. It’s beyond stupidity. That’s why I want to thank the traders for the opportunities they give us each time they squawk at their viewers. The reverends all have something poignant to say, and their sermons change by the minute. They create their own opportunities to sell and buy. And, as long as you recognize that the original Reverend had his time, then you know what allows you to be so right and they so wrong, provided you have conviction and time your buys correctly. Thank you, traders. I don’t know what we would do without you. (See here for a full list of the stocks in Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
Jim Cramer.
Rob Kim | NBCUniversal
It’s time to give thanks.