Interesting Videoclips of the Week (July 19 – July 25)

Editor’s Note: In this series of articles, we include important or interesting videoclips with brief comments. Our Web Software does not permit embedding of the clips into our articles. So we shall have to be content to include the links to the actual videoclips. We are very happy with the tremendous response from readers to this series of articles. We thank them sincerely and profusely. 

This is an article that expresses our personal opinions about comments made on Television and in Print. It is NOT intended to provide any investment advice of any type whatsoever.  No one should base any investing decisions or conclusions  based on anything written in or inferred from this article. Investing is a serious matter and all investment decisions should only be taken after a detailed discussion with your investment advisor and should be subject to your objectives, suitability requirements and risk tolerances.



Thus spake Whitney! The S&P 500 was resting semi-precariously on its support at 870 merely 10 trading days ago on Monday, July 13. Then spoke Meredith Whitney on CNBC Squawk Box and the market took off.  The damage in 2007 began in the financial sector and Ms. Whitney was prescient in calling that sell off in Bank stocks. So when she turned positive and said that Goldman was going to blow away numbers, that was the match that ignited the fire. The next day, Goldman blew away Whitney’s high numbers.

In the last 10 trading days, the S&P 500 went from 870 (pre-open Monday, July 13) to 978 on Friday July 24, a 12% plus increase, a proverbial steep acceleration wall.  After last week, many people predicted a sell-off or at least a correction but the market confounded every cautious seer and destroyed the bears both mentally and materially.  In a way, this past week was even more damaging to the bears than last week. 

Steve Grasso, a floor trader and CNBC Fast Money participant said on Friday after the close “I have never seen a market like we have seen this week, unbelievable”.  (see clip 3 below). We will not go that far, because this market still has a long way to go before it can be compared to the fourth quarter of 1999 – in that quarter, the Nasdaq 100 went up 50%, as we recall.

We were not surprised that CNBC decided to celebrate the crossing of Dow 9000 with a special program with Larry Kudlow and Maria Bartiromo. We were pleasantly surprised when we heard many participants voice notes of caution including Maria Bartiromo. In fact, Maria often played the feisty Bear to Larry Kudlow’s passionate Bull and questioned the fundamentals of the economy, bemoaned the lack of top-line revenue and worried about valuations. We wonder whether the fact that CNBC did not get giddy may prove to be actually bullish for stocks. This CNBC special report gets our pole position for the week.

As a housekeeping note, we said on June 6, that the CNBC Hall of Fame clip of Jim Rogers and Larry Kudlow trashing the US Dollar and the Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke might end up signaling the bottom of the dollar. That has proved to be correct so far but, this week the dollar did go down and touch the Rogers-Kudlow lows. We shall see if these lows get broken next week.

This week, we feature the following clips:

1. Dow 9000 Celebration on CNBC – Various clips from this one-hour special on Thursday, July 23
   
2. Lakshman Achuthan of ECRI on The Kudlow Report on Monday, July 20
   
3. Steve Grasso in the Fast Money opening segment on Friday, July 24
   
4. Jim Bianco of Bianco Research on CNBC Closing Bell on Monday, July 20

1. Dow 9000 Celebration – CNBC Special Report with Larry Kudlow and Maria Bartiromo on Thursday, July 23 – 7-8 pm

We found this to be an interesting special with a couple of excellent guests, lively discussions and a real feisty debate between bulls and bears. Very different from the rah-rah 1999 CNBC specials. Below we highlight a few segments from this special.

• Dow 9,000 – The Summer Rally – 7:00 pm – Steve Grasso of Stuart Frankel is the first interview. Mr. Grasso, unlike many CNBC guests, has knowledge of trading orders and flows of large mutual funds and hedge funds. We always prefer facts to opinions. Mr. Grasso usually lays out the facts and then offers his views when asked. We try to listen whenever he speaks. Watch this clip.

• Dow 9,000: Bright Sides in the Economy – 7:26 pm – This clip features comments of Rick Santelli of CNBC, Mort Zuckerman, Chairman of Boston Properties and Joseph Lavorgna of Deutsche Bank. This was trader Rick Santelli offering his opinions on the economy, the corporate bond market and not the political-commentator Rick Santelli. We were delighted to listen to Mort Zuckerman. Mr. Zuckerman, a billionaire commercial real estate investor, is a down-to-earth speaker and an astute investor. He is an always must listen. Joe Lavorgna of Deutsche Bank, pretty bearish on the US Economy, explains why he has now turned bullish.

• Dow 9,000: Comparing Recessions – 7:38 pm – This clip features sharp debates on commodities and emerging markets. It is a must watch in our opinion. Larry Kudlow opens this segment saluting Dr. Copper’s role as the leading economic forecaster. Rick Santelli takes exception to Larry Kudlow’s optimism and explains his viewpoint that this recession is very different than other recessions. Then the real Maria Bartiromo stood up for commodities. She reminded us of her 2007 cheerleader’s passion for GLG2, Global Liquidity Global Growth. Maria repeated the basic bullish case by stating “I say you got to be owning these even if the economy does not come back – these are finite resources..”. Then Maria made the natural extension and plugged Emerging Markets by stating ” Go fishing where the fish are” and talked about the Chinese consumer. This got so bad that Mort Zuckerman had to intervene and tell Maria that China still remains an export-driven economy and there are 25 million people unemployed in China (isn’t that a small number?, we wonder).

• Dow 9,000: Investors on the Sidelines? Joe Moglia, TD Ameritrade Chairman & Ronald Kruszewski, Chairman of Stifel Nicholaus – 7:14 pm – Both CEOs expressed fairly cautious views about the market rally. So cautious that finally Larry Kudlow could not restrain himself and said ” I love that 2 leading financial CEOs are worry-warts; this is terrific stuff”. Then Larry went back to Ron and asked him about “the nice summer casserole of stocks”. Joe Moglia described the attitudes of Ameritrade clients and was cautious. Larry Kudlow then went back to to Ron Kruszewski and talked about optimism. Kruszewski replied “hey listen, I do run a financial services firm; optimism does drive our revenue. So I am all for it, but I also have a little bit caution is in the mix. I tell you why Larry..” Then he went on to tell Kudlow why. Again, this special was so different from the 1999 CNBC when allegedly CNBC did not tolerate bearish comments or guests on its shows.

• I have never seen a market like we have seen this week, unbelievable”
  
• for last week, we watched the hedge funds lay them out, lay them out. at the beginning of the week, they tried to break the market, they couldn’t.
  
• I was 5:1 sells to buys. I reversed that yesterday & today