The market's been doing that thing it does lately—lurching up, plummeting down, then somehow ending up higher than where it started—and CNBC's most animated financial personality has some characteristically colorful advice for investors: hang on tight.
Jim Cramer, whose delivery style falls somewhere between motivational speaker and your most excited uncle at Thanksgiving dinner, is telling folks to essentially channel their inner mechanical bull rider during these volatile times.
"It's better to stay in, stay on and let her ride," he proclaimed recently in what might be the most Cramer-esque market guidance imaginable. The man has never met a folksy metaphor he didn't immediately adopt and broadcast to millions.
I've been watching Cramer's prognostications for years now, and there's something different about his current stance. Beneath the rodeo imagery and theatrical hand gestures, he's touching on something that's been quietly driving this market higher despite an endless parade of reasons it shouldn't be.
Look, the fundamental point here isn't wrong. The market has shown remarkable resilience despite... well, everything. Inflation fears, interest rate drama, global conflicts that should have investors running for the hills—yet the S&P keeps climbing that proverbial wall of worry. It's almost annoying how right the optimists have been.
What Cramer's tapping into (perhaps accidentally, perhaps not) is what I'd call the "reluctant bull market" phenomenon. It's a market that rises despite everyone expecting it to fall, fueled partly by investors who remain invested simply because the psychological pain of missing out has become greater than the fear of losing money.
The math on this makes sense, actually. Missing major upside moves devastates long-term returns far more than riding through periodic downturns. Anyone who's panic-sold during a correction knows the special agony of watching markets recover without them.
(I once spoke with a financial advisor who said his primary job wasn't picking investments but preventing clients from selling at the bottom. "The hardest part is keeping people from being their own worst enemies," he told me, sighing with the weight of a thousand client phone calls during market meltdowns.)
This creates a bizarre market psychology where many participants are simultaneously expecting a crash while remaining fully invested—a kind of financial cognitive dissonance that actually helps sustain upward momentum.
The thing about Cramer's rodeo advice, though? It's missing some crucial nuance.
Staying invested only makes sense if your portfolio matches your risk tolerance and time horizon in the first place. Riding out volatility with a portfolio of speculative tech stocks funded with margin loans isn't bravery—it's financial bungee jumping without checking if the cord is properly attached.
And here's where his mechanical bull metaphor breaks down entirely. On an actual mechanical bull, everyone eventually gets thrown off. That's literally the whole point! The market, meanwhile, has historically rewarded those who refuse to dismount... provided they built their financial position on something more substantial than FOMO and hope.
Cramer's track record, of course, contains enough hits and misses to satisfy both fans and critics. His infamous "Bear Stearns is fine" comment days before the company's collapse stands as a monument to the dangers of financial TV prognostication. Yet some of his longer-term calls have proven remarkably prescient.
So what's really happening underneath all this "let her ride" advice?
The market has effectively conditioned investors to view dips as buying opportunities rather than warning signs. This behavioral conditioning creates its own momentum... until, of course, the time it doesn't. Markets have an almost cruel way of rewarding a strategy just long enough for it to become consensus before absolutely crushing it.
For now, though, Cramer's mechanical bull approach seems aligned with reality. The market continues to shrug off concerns that would have sent it spiraling in previous cycles.
Whether you find his caffeinated delivery style enlightening or exhausting (and there are passionate camps in both corners), the core message contains more wisdom than his critics might admit: for most investors, trying to dance in and out of markets typically ends with two left feet and a significantly lighter wallet.
So maybe the man with the sound buttons and rolled-up sleeves is onto something. Stay in, stay on, and let her ride.
Just make sure your bull is properly saddled first.
