Jim Cramer spent Friday explaining why stocks went up. Oil fell. That was the reason. Not earnings. Not GDP. Not consumer sentiment. Oil went down so stocks went up. This passes for analysis on a network that charges cable subscribers actual money.
The man gets paid to announce correlations a hamster could spot. Commodity drops. Equities rise. Groundbreaking stuff. Next he'll tell us water is wet but only if the Fed says so.
Now he's pivoting to next week. The Federal Reserve meeting is coming. He calls it "the next test" for stocks. As if stocks are students cramming for an exam instead of pieces of paper whose prices move when algos sneeze. As if Jerome Powell is going to walk into that meeting, glance at the S&P, and decide whether it gets a gold star or detention.
Retail traders will watch Cramer's segment. They'll nod along. They'll think oil and the Fed are the variables that matter. They'll ignore the fact that their portfolios have been getting violently destroyed for reasons that have nothing to do with either. Then they'll lose another 30% and blame Putin or inflation or Mercury in retrograde.
The Fed meeting happens every six weeks. Every single time it's framed as a test. Stocks pass or fail based on nothing. Then two weeks later another test arrives. This one will be different though. This one really matters. Until the next one.
Cramer's job is to make you believe the noise has meaning. That falling oil on a Friday explains a rebound. That a scheduled meeting next week will determine market direction. That any of this is knowable or tradeable if you just listen hard enough to a guy shouting into a camera.
The rebound already happened. The test is already over. Your account still failed.
Photo by Joachim Schnürle on Unsplash
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