"Huge Capital Supply Overwhelms Stocks"
By Jim Cramer
RealMoney.com Columnist
5/10/2006 11:03 AM EDT
"The balance sheet of the world's investors is driving this market higher. Sure, we can focus on the president's bad standing, the oil market overheating, Iran, the Fed.
But the balance sheet favors the bulls. There's just not enough stock around to sate the buyers, because the buyers are bigger than they've ever been.
Let me explain. For the first time in history, we have not one, not two, but three pools of trillions of dollars of wealth. We have the hedge funds, the private equity funds and the petrodollar gang.
I have firsthand experience with all three. I recently gave a talk in front of the Goldman Sachs alumni association. That's where I first heard the trillion-dollar figure. There was, literally, three trillion dollars in hedge fund money in the room. That's amazing to me.
A month after that experience, I met with the largest private equity fund for energy. In the room was, again, several trillion dollars of pension and private money, fighting to get into the private equity fund. It was there that I heard about the trillions of dollars in petro-money looking for an equity home.
It's only getting bigger. KKR's private equity fund is not tapping retail money overseas because our regulations are too strict, but again, that's more money chasing fewer goods.
When you look at these pools of capital -- and I am not even including the Chinese, who tend to be buyers of Treasuries, not stocks -- you see that there's just too much money overwhelming too few stocks.
Which is why, despite the Fed and the grim "macro" news, we keep going higher. "
(in
www.realmoney.com)