|
Good resource. Just lays out how big of a scumfuck the guy is, same for the other brooks brothers demons of his ilk.
I confess to confusion. I recently watched a Wall Street Confidential segment on The Street wherein Jim Cramer described how hedge fund managers basically juice the market to close out their years in good positions. I don’t know whether to laud him for being so honest and blowing the whistle on this stuff or scream at him for being the sort of ass that created this situation in the first place. See my dilemma?
I’m not naive…the market has always be subject to the predations of those with inside knowledge and capital. As famous entrepreneur Mark Cuban recently said in on his Maverick blog, “The stock market is for suckers.” It makes me wonder how Cramer feels when he knows this manipulation goes on and yet he continues to opine on various stocks and make buy and sell recommendations using company data and history (his much vaunted research) knowing full well that those same stocks and futures can be pumped or squashed by some punk hedge fund manager out to increase his year-end bonus. Screw the small investor who puts his or her five grand into a stock Cramer recommends -- those fund managers and investors have got Manhattan condo fees to pay.
Cramer says were he a hedge fund manager, he would have manipulated prices to achieve the results he wanted. (See the video here)
“If I was short at my hedge fund, positioned short and I needed it down I would create a level of activity beforehand that would drive the futures.” said Cramer. “It didn’t take a lot of money. Similarly, if I was long and I wanted to make things rosy I would go in and take a bunch of stocks and make sure they were higher. I would commit five million in capital to make it happen. You need perhaps ten mil in capital today to knock stuff down, but it’s a fun game. A lucrative game. You can move it up and then fade it, that can create a negative feel…you boost the futures, then the real market comes in to knock it down and that creates a very negative view. It’s a strategy that is very effective. I would encourage anyone in a hedge fund to do it. It’s legal. It’s a quick way to make a lot of money and it’s satisfying. No one would ever admit to this. Although I’m not going to say that on TV.”
Jim is at least honest, although this would seem to be skirting the prohibitions on market manipulation or fomenting.
“Hedge funds are positioned long/short unlike mutual funds that are positioned long; so it’s vital that you manage the market, it’s vital for your payday that you don’t let the market lift.” Cramer continues. “Take Research In Motion (RIM) you can't let that rise like it has. You need to use a lot of your firepower to knock that stock down because it’s a fulcrum stock. If I was short, I would hit a lot of guys with RIM. You can’t foment and you can’t create by yourself an impression that a stock is going down. That’s a violation SEC rules. But you do it anyway because the SEC doesn’t understand it. It’s blatantly illegal, but hedge funds that are down have to be more aggressive. It’s important to foment the impression that RIM, for example, isn’t good. When you see an offering you would hit this guy and that guy. If I wanted to go higher, I would take and bid, take and bid. If I wanted lower, I would hit and offer, hit and offer. It might cost me ten million to knock down someone like RIM, but it would be fabulous because it would beleaguer all the moron longs. If you are in bad position it’s important to get people talking about RIM as if there is something wrong. Get the Pizzanis of the world talking negatively about it. Then you call the Journal and get the bozo reporter to do a story on PALM and some new product giveaway of theirs. It’s the sort of thing you must be doing at a hedge fund today and if you are not maybe you shouldn’t be in the game.”
So, there you have it -- break the law, juice the market and feed disingenuous info to the “bozos” of the media. Nice. So again my dilemma; respect for Cramer’s honesty or distain for the fact he was one of the architects of this system.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
