Saturday, December 20, 2008

Just a Small Sample of Kudlow's Terrible Calls...

(Larry Kudlow) "Let's call this a bear market...that's just some goofy technical definition thing--this has not been a great time, we all know that, blah, blah, blah--but I mean, what the issue here is that whether we're close to a bottom here, as Dave Kotok suggested or is looking for, ah, or, whether this is going to be real pain going forward--you know the first half of the year pretty terrible--is it going to be a bad second half of the year? Should people get the heck out? Should long-term investors get out? I mean, on a Friday night after a week like this, these are the things folks are going to be talking about in their living rooms, in front of their TV sets as they watch Kudlow and Company...what can you say to them Don?"

(Don Luskin) "All right, I got three points for those people. One, since the October 9th top, the financial sector of the S&P is down 42 percent. If you take those stocks out, the rest of the S&P is only down 11 percent. Now being down 11 percent is no buggy-ride but it's also no bear market--so don't let one sector stink up the joint. Number two let's talk about sentiment. When you are on a show like this and the host asks you 'are stocks doomed?' the very fact that he asks you means the answer is no. People ask that questions at bottoms, they do not ask it at tops. Number three, you are dead right that the issue here is the dollar but it's not so much a question of the dollar stopping going down. The dollar has stopped going down. It made its bottom on Bear Sterns Monday and it's been gradually higher ever since. The question is getting it up, not just keeping it from going down. We need a commitment from Ben Bernanke to raise rates and take back those mistaken rate cuts from the last nine months."--June 27, 2008/CNBC/Dow 11,346