The Dow Jones Industrial Average began the day up a bit. Usually the day after a steep drop features a bit of a rebound, as some investors start looking for stocks that were dragged down along with everyone else on the terrible day, and are undervalued.
But the Dow is now down 43, at 6720. (Up a bit since I typed that.)
Over in the Corner, Jonah linked a conversation on the Today show from this morning.
In his intro, Matt Lauer mentioned that a third of people polled below 6,000 in the not too distant future.
Jim Cramer: We’re going lower. I think we could bounce periodically, but this is a bad market, and I don’t think people should be counting on it for anything positive.
Lauer mentioned Cramer’s earlier words of praise for Obama, and Cramer responded, “We have an agenda in this country now that I would describe as being a radical agenda. I think that we had a budget that came out that has put a level of fear in this country that I have not seen ever in my life, and I think that changed everything.”
When Lauer responded, “So the polices are not shareholder-friendly?” Cramer offered a classic bug-eyed response: “Shareholder-friendly? This is the most, greatest wealth destruction I’ve seen by a president! . . . The stock market is the country right now! This is where people’s wealth is, this is their pension plans, their 401ks, their IRAs!”
On Election Day 2008, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 9,625.
On Inauguration Day 2009, the DJIA closed at 7,949.09.