if there's any doubt about what cramer meant, check out this timeline: http://adamsoptions.blogspot.com/2008/03/can-you-afford-not-to-watch-jim-cramer.html March 11th, 1:19 he has this video up titled "Bear is Solvent" (...) Now Bear is one of those companies that is selling way below book. Normally when i see that in a brokerage, I want to buy ITM calls (later in the post) He very clearly makes a bullish case for BSC, the stock, on the Street video at the top of the timeline.
Oldtrader, Just to be clear,do you think Cramer was recommending or not recommending the general public to hold on to BSC stock? I can sort of see what you are saying but the guy's question was probably relating to BSC stock,I don't think Joe Public would be taking Cramers advice on funds held at Bear. Either way Cramer was bidding up Bear as being solvent which it was not,this guy gets it wrong all the time,just yesterday morning he said on Squawk he would be "aggressively selling S+P futures",at about 6 am and we all know what happened to Index futures shorts yesterday
You cannot argue with someone who does not have common sense and reasoning logic. So lets just end this on a high note... OldTrader's last job:
The mistake you're making (in this particular thread) is in assuming that the caller has the same knowledge of and vocabulary to accurately describe these concepts that you do. The caller was obviously talking about his stock holdings. He watches Cramer and threw the word liquidity in there, but what he meant was, 'Should I sell my stock'. The response from atticus, which asked whether you seriously think someone with a trading account there would be calling Cramer to check whether to cash out, is on point.
Just for fun I listened to Cramer on sirius tonight driving home. He totally denies recommending the stock. He said he was talking about not moving the account only. I hate when people are obviously wrong, and won't admit they screwed up. Again, displaying the stock chart, and saying they are a buyout candidate has nothing to do with liquidity. It was a recommendation of the company stock.
Oldtrader, For the record: do you maintain that Cramer was not recommending BSC's stock as a purchase and that he honestly believed the caller was an institutional client with BSC who was concerned about getting his money out and not another fast money bozo who was worried about what to do with his 30 shares?
Unbelievable. He responded to John Stewart making fun of him on mad money today by saying why would he recommend buying bear stearns when the stock was heading to zero. This guy has an idiotic anachronistic sense of time. First of all John Stewart made fun of him for his call on Tuesday and this idiot Cramer refered to his call on Bear Stearns on Friday that BSC was headed to zero. Any idiot could have said that Bear was worthless on Friday. Also this guy on youtube Don Howard has found that Jim Cramer's Street.com has erased its BSC stock pick on Tues, march 11 from its portfolio record Cramer's picks. No shame. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=772PXNSrSiI&feature=user
OH MY GOD. Cramer was absolutely WRONG. It took a $30B FEDERAL GOVERNMENT GUARANTEE !!!! on a SUNDAY NIGHT!!!! to get JPMChase to even pay $2/share!!. Obviously, without that. The stock was never going to open Monday morning. Bankruptcy, and take over by Federal Officials was plan B for Monday morning. Otherwise, why wouldn't several of Bear Stern's executives could come up with the ~$250M pocket change to buy all the outstanding shares at $2/share. Don't you get it? They were toast. ON THE OTHER HAND, if Cramer answered the question correctly ... I am sure they would be blaming the "Run on the Bank" on him. So maybe he had no other option, except not to handle the question.