Wednesday, June 3, 2009
(Cont'd from above)...

Jim (cont'd):   

Either the interviewer or the interviewee certainly weren't in sync during the interview, because the interviewer asked the poor fund manager, "What's your principle worry right here? Inflation?" The fund manager, who had clearly not gotten the memo, momentarily had that "zebra in the headlights" look... which is only slightly less clever than a deer... and then said, "No. I'm not concerned about inflation at the moment." Oops... Stunned silence... regrouping... And then the interviewer asks, "Then you must be very worried about deflation?"... I think that the subject... the target... whatever you call it... felt bad for the interviewer, and gave her one of those, "Yes. I am somewhat concerned" phrases... that less than the lunacy of the moment... which got me thinking...

It got me thinking that, you know what? I have the answer to the coverage of this market... and here it is...

A worry wart-amid!...

We need to uproot the worry warts... we need to freeze them... we need to scrape them... we need to burn them... or whatever these various over-the-counter nostrums do... That's why we have created the ultimate worry wart enemy... a "-mid" made up of wart removers!

You see, this really is the issue, and I've been waiting for a heavy down day like today to bring this up. You see, there's always something to be a worry wart about... there's always something to be concerned with... as there has been ever since I started in this business at Dow 1300... and often the worries just cancel each other out...

Consider the questions posed by the interviewers from today...

If someone is desperately worried about inflation, and the next guy is desperately worried about deflation... then I feel terrific! And I feel we could be on some sort of benign inflation... but not catastrophic, 1930s deflation. I love "Mr. In-Between" because that means I could own the banks. They do great in that environment... Take some JPMorgan (JPM*)... maybe some Goldman Sachs (GS*)... I would if my charitable trust didn't already own them... since both work fabulously in that particular environment.

It sounds like a case for worry wart remover!...

How about oil?... Oil has been going up... something that I have been "worried" about... because of gasoline...

But there are so many oil stocks that dominate this market... the drillers, like Transocean Inc. (RIG), Schlumberger (SLB)... or the majors like Occidental Petroleum Corp. (OXY) and Exxon Mobil (XOM)... that perhaps I am too worried.

If people are worried about oil going up too much, or going down too much, maybe it's not that far from the right level after all, and we should be buying SLB or RIG, on weakness like today.

Once again, a little dab of wart remover...

Or how about the dollar?... I hear lots of people worried about the weak dollar...

They're frightened about what it says about Obama... they're frightened about what it says about the U.S. bond market... but I, on the other hand, worry about the dollar getting stronger... which would crush the earnings of all the foods, like the Coke (KO) and the Kellogg (K) and the Heinz (HNZ), as well as the drug companies, like Cramer un-fave, Pfizer (PFE) or Merck (MRK)... along with Eli Lilly (LLY).

With both sides going nuts with worry... I have to tell you, when everybody's frightened, I say that the dollar's probably at the right level.

So, wart remover is definitely called for with this one.

Or how about skyrocketing interest rates from a month ago?...

Shouldn't we be ultra, mega, mega vitamin worried about that?... and have lots of people fretting about it on air? I am not worried! Since rates are incredibly low even from a year ago... and, if you do the arithmetic, you know they haven't affected affordability at all for the first-time home buyers, who've been on the sidelines forever living in their in-laws home... because they now get the $8,000 tax credit. Can't anyone do the math? That credit obliterates the teeny-tiny 0.4% point mortgage interest rate that everyone's so worried about, unless you're taking out a master-sized jumbo mortgage. $8,000 back trumps it. It makes me want to go buy a regional bank that can benefit like FirstMerit Corp. (FMER) in Ohio...

Serious, double-duty worry wart removal needed!

I am not saying it is wrong to worry... I am saying it is wrong to worry when everyone else is doing the worrying for you, particularly when they're worried about opposite sides of the same coin, and they're busy cancelling each other out!

The problem, of course, is the notion that it is irresponsible not to be worried. You can't come on TV and be blithe about it. You will look like a simpleton... Worse, an entertainer... the lowest of the low! But it is my job to remind you, as someone who has made tens of millions of dollars while I was worried, that you can't constantly take counsel to every worry. You need to recognize that markets go down like today... in part because it's been up so much, that I've been worried about people who haven't sold something...

I'd be worried about if you haven't sold something, and I still am... You see, you worry... you know what I worry about more than anything else?... It's what I can't use the wart remover on... giving back money that I have made... and that I haven't rung the register on... It's in my account... I look at it every day... but it is not a profit until it's taken. That's my worry...

Because turning a profit into a loss isn't just something to be worried about... it's a Cardinal sin...

The bottom line...

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The Bottom Line!:     In this market, you can't forget your worry wart remover. Being worried about every problem, and its mutually-exclusive polar opposite, is not a strategy, even if it's most of what the financial press wants to talk about. It's a recipe for missing every great buying opportunity... even when it was down 120 points today... because you were paralyzed by age old concerns that have often already been factored into the market... or because everyone else is so fearful, that you've just gotten your chance to make some serious gains... if you just keep that wart remover handy, to keep the worry warts are arm's length... or at least finger length... because that's where the worst one's are!

[verbatim recap]

[end of segment]

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