Cramer: The big market rally out of nowhere since mid-June is why I tell people to stay invested

Published Sun, Aug 14 20228:46 PM EDT

We've had a remarkable run since mid-June, when we traveled from around 3,636 on the S & P 500 to close at 4,280 on Friday. That's nearly an 18% gain. I challenge you to name one prominent strategist who has switched directions, caved or just plain got real bullish as we went higher? I can't think of one. That's the problem. I often tell you to stay the course, as I did in June, reminding you that if you flit out and flit back in the market you're doomed to failure. Now there was no reason to go long in June. None whatsoever. We had a red-hot consumer price index (CPI) in the first week of that month, which then caused a horrific decline. Right after that number, the 10-year Treasury yield soared to more than 3.49%. What's so amazing to me is that the moment that rates hit their highest levels — literally the day, June 14 — the S & P 500 closed in its first bear market since March 2020, the month Covid was declared a pandemic. (The index hit its most recent low of 3,636 on June 17.) Go back though, rewind the tape, and almost no one, publicly said rates were going to go down. The vast majority of the chatter was about the 10-year yield going to 4% because the Federal Reserve would have to take short rates almost as high if not higher. (The 10-year Treasury yield settled at 2.84% on Friday). There were some voices saying that the big stock market dive in the second week of June was overdone. Carley Garner, one of my favorite technicians, did so on June 14, in the heart of the carnage. That helped us do an "Off the Charts" report for CNBC's "Mad Money," about why the market was so oversold and due for a bounce. Later that week, still an unbelievable time to get in, we told you that the S & P's proprietary oscillator hit minus-10, where anything below minus-5 signals a buy. Of course, you would have to buy before it hits minus-10 and then after it hits minus-10 because the oscillator can't be that precise. But the moment sure was. Now let's talk about what caused the S & P 500 to bottom on June 17. It's become quite a bone of contention but what caused the bottom was a belief that perhaps things could not get worse than this for inflation, because there were too many commodities going down, and there was a sense that Russia's war against Ukraine was become less of a front-page story. China was coming out of Covid lockdowns, accentuated by its June 18 shopping holiday, the largest festival of its kind. At the exact same time, oil ticked at $115 per barrel but failed to take out the March high of $120. That turned out to be an amazing turning point because it happened to be when the biggest bulls on crude went all in an