Don’t worry everybody, the stock market will probably be fine despite an upward shift in the placement of a dot on a piece of digital poster board.
Although a slim majority of Fed officials have apparently gone rogue and now harbor manifestly cruel ideas about hiking rates by as much as a half-percentage point by the time your newborn child celebrates his or her second birthday, the S&P 500 isn’t likely to collapse.
I know that because David Tepper told me so. Or, actually, he didn’t tell me so, because I don’t receive divine revelations. Rather, he told CNBC’s Scott Wapner, which must have irritated Joe Kernen, the network’s usual hotline to Mount Olympus.
“I think the stock market is still fine for now,” Tepper said Thursday, in the wake of the June FOMC. (Phew.)
Earlier this week (and on countless occasions previous), I lampooned CNBC’s fawning, obsequious segments with “legends” of the investment universe. Just listen to the melodramatic lead-in from Wapner in the clip (below).
“So the Fed kinda surprised us. You earlier this morning, said that you think Jay Powell is great, that he did a great job, you said you were on an island,” Wapner intoned, to Jim Cramer, who pretended to have absolutely no idea where Wapner was going.
“Now, I can tell you you are not.” “Why? There isn’t a single person who has joined me in the idea that Powell knows what he’s doing,” Cramer said, slapping the table. “Ok,” Wapner said, adopting an anticipatory cadence and speaking to Cramer as you would to a puppy who doubts you’re really going to share that string cheese you’re eating.
“I spoke to David Tepper.” “Smart guy, owns the Panthers,” Cramer said, for anyone (read: no one) who’s unfamiliar. “He thinks the Fed did a good job,” and that they showed they’re “not asleep at the wheel.”
“Can I just explain to you who Dave Tepper is?,” Cramer asked Wapner.
Cramer claimed Tepper “predicted the pandemic down to the day,” a wildly misleading characterization of what Tepper actually said about the pandemic. (He said the virus would derail stocks a month before it actually did. Cramer made it sound as though Tepper predicted COVID itself before it came calling.)
After that, Jim essentially declared Tepper’s assessment the final word on the June Fed meeting. “He thinks what they did was smart,” Wapner said. “Well there you,” Jim interjected.
Yes, “there you go.”
Can someone please remind me what, exactly, the Fed “did” on Wednesday? Oh, that’s right, they didn’t “do” anything, other than tweak the administered rates by five basis points.
Never mind that Tepper’s assessment actually lines up with my own, I’m donning my media critic hat right now. What you see above, in that clip, is one of the most absurdly belabored segments I can remember. I’m adept (and I do mean Adept, with emphasis and a capital “A”) at taking one or two quotes and editorializing around them, but I’m not sure even I could squeeze two entire minutes of live television out of ten (or so) words from one man.
Even more ridiculous was the “article” CNBC penned Thursday documenting the exchange between Wapner and Cramer. Here’s an excerpt:
On “Squawk Box” on Sept. 24, 2010, two years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the 2008 financial crisis, Tepper took the old adage, “Don’t fight the Fed” to the next level. He said that US central bank’s efforts to support the economy with near-zero rates and massive bond buying, will make most investment choices go up.
The Fed-driven stock market rally that ensued became known as the “Tepper rally.”
Yep. That’s definitely what aliens will learn 40 million years from now when they discover the desolate remains of what used to be our planet. Once they decipher the English language and sort through the voluminous accounts of human history, they’ll learn about The Agricultural Revolution, The Renaissance, Waterloo, the World Wars and the Tepper Rally.
God bless CNBC for making history — one billionaire worshipping session at a time.
They might as well have Ja Rule on speed dial.
Oh they do