Craig:
Here is JJ's (Cramer's) most recent stuff on tape painting, what are your thoughts??
Commentary : Wrong! Dispatches from the Front
Closing-Price Whiplash
By James J. Cramer
12/29/99 5:03 PM ET
Click here for the latest filings from James J. Cramer.
What got into Nokia (NOK:NYSE) in those last few minutes? Bank error in all of our favor? Gift from the Finnish gods of profit? Someone seeking to be up 500% in one year? More name-your-own-closing-price?
This year, which has seen the sanctity of just about everything else in this business go up in a bullish cloud of smoke, also took apart the holiness of the closing price. Nobody was ever supposed to manipulate that. Sure, it happened. A point or two got tacked on by some manager trying to make up some performance. A crime, but not one easily prosecuted.
Now closing prices get thrown around like buses in a Godzilla movie. It is crazy. They don't mean jack. Nokia went up 10 points in the time it takes to go from downtown to midtown, without a gridlock alert.
I saw it happen in a whole bunch of stocks I own. The only people it hurts, of course, are the short-sellers, and they have no standing, so I guess nothing will ever happen to the kind souls (law enforcement authorities, read "outlaws").
But it has put a whole new element of phoniness into the equation. Is nothing in this market going to be the same after 1999 as before?
You know where I stand.
TIA
Duke |
