"Buy, Sell or Hold?"
By Jim Cramer
RealMoney.com Columnist
7/17/2006 8:59 AM EDT
"Three options: sit tight, buy, sell.
That's the menu. Let's review.
First, to sell. You can't believe we haven't come down. You can't believe that we haven't reacted to the world's events. If world events escalate from here, there could be further reason to sell. Otherwise, though, we have to believe that we have seen all of the bad earnings we have seen already extended to most other companies. Stocks might be able to do nothing on not-great earnings and actually go up on good earnings. So selling into the weakness seems wrong.
Buying's harder. We are still not massively oversold. We are still not at a lot of negativity in terms of people buying endless puts and the public leaving the table, although the trading in brokerage names for individuals would indicate there are. We have said to wait for the oscillator to go to minus 4, the level where comfort begins. We're not there, so can only pick small and circle the wagons.
Doing nothing. That seems like the best course because it is too low to sell or short, but we need to leave space for those who still believe it isn't too late to go and for those shorts who have been coining money and have shown no sense of doing anything but pressing. Sitting on your hands is very, very hard. But the hardest course is often the best one. That's the case now. And all that can go wrong is a major rally, which doesn't seem possible yet. That rally could occur right from the get-go on a new day, but almost all of those kinds of rallies have failed so I am not worried about a chance to get in. "
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