The Dow’s intraday collapse of nearly 1,000 points on Thursday offered a clue into what investors truly think of this market, Cramer said during Mad Money. In short, they assumed the move was legit, and not some computer error.
These people believed that Procter & Gamble deserved to plummet to $47 from the low $60s, that the Dow’s decline was the natural result of Europe’s debt troubles and the riots in Greece. They showed they had no confidence in the markets, no conviction at all.
“And that’s deadly for stocks,” Cramer said.
But he was quick to point out the differences between the Europe Union and the US. While Cramer wouldn’t disregard the Continent’s affect on the American markets, he did note we’re much stronger than the EU right now. Employment’s getting better, housing is improving, and business is ticking up. So as scary as yesterday’s intraday plunge may have been, it was not the stuff of late 2008/early 2009, when the market had a fundamental reason for being that low.
That means, as bad as Europe is right now, there’s a level at which that contagion is baked in and stocks look interesting, and Cramer thinks we saw that level yesterday: Dow 9,000. And he said he doubted it was out of the realm of possibility that we could pull back to that level. Therefore, investors should wait for the decline before they buy anything again, other than his preferred accidental high-yielders.
In the end, though, people need to keep in mind that the American markets and economy continue to improve. The US is not the EU.
“Our markets will stop their declines sooner,” Cramer said, “and rebound harder than any of the markets over there.”
Cramer’s charitable trust owns Procter & Gamble.
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