Saturday, March 22, 2008

Media connections

Yesterday Jim Cramer focused his show Mad Money on how to invest: the basics. Something he said that resonated with me and both Comm classes, was the idea of how to identify a top or bottom of the market for a particular stock i.e., company. My understanding of his theory was that if everybody is in agreement then the tide is about to change. So, I guess that means I should buy a house because everyone seems to agree that the housing market sucks.

'When everybody agrees' is a really scary idea. It would be one thing to say that most people agree but how do you actually get everybody to agree. I bet you could still find someone that would argue the earth is flat and the sun is a chariot. I know that Cramer was not talking about everybody literally but it is an interesting idea. If everybody agreed then there would be no change, no movement, no life left in anything.

So if the market has consensus then there is no reason for the price to change. We all agree. That is the price. That is the answer. Done. Over. Life would suck all the way around if we all agreed. The worst part is that we would all agree that it sucked.

Invention, creation, motivation comes from the friction caused by disagreement. In fact what Cramer is really saying is cause friction, be disagreeable, move counter-intuitively so the market will continue to move.

The point is... be the leader and change directions despite what EVERYBODY says.