Out of Ammo, Greenspan Joins the Gloomy Camp
By James J. Cramer
12/20/2002 11:28
Two camps -- the "It's a little better than it was" camp and the "It's no better than it was, maybe a little worse" camp -- are having a tug of war right now.
Ironically, in today's version of the tug, the latter camp is causing the market to rally because one of the swing players in the ruckus, Alan Greenspan, switched sides.
That's right, Greenspan's speech last night put him in the latter camp, and when he's in that camp, people get more bullish. Unfortunately, even as I am in the former camp, I recognize that Greenspan has limited weapons down here. Short of devaluing the dollar with massive printing press work, Greenspan's out of options. Fortunately, he can print the money. Unfortunately, the world's too smart a place for that to happen for too long without commodities spiking madly, which is exactly what they are doing.
Why do I think that things are "a little better" than they were? I take my point of view from little data points, things like Verizon VZ being able to make an acquisition , Nortel NT looking less like a bankruptcy candidate, Nextel NXTL doing better, Intel INTC and AMD AMD saying things are OK -- you know, those kinds of things.
The funny thing about the Greenspan shift to the gloom camp is that, today, it is reflected positively. But anyone who opines on it for too long knows that it isn't really good for the market. To be frank, if things aren't getting better after all that's been done to lower rates and print money, maybe, just maybe, they won't get better.
I am not there yet. But I think Greenspan's shift will mean that more people join his camp in a few days and when they do, they will regret that they bought stocks on his words. Because they are bad for prospects, not good. He's out of all the good ammo. |
