After the Dow Jones Industrial Average topped 40,000 last week, CNBC’s Jim Cramer reflected Monday on his many years in the business, saying investors should take a step back and realize how far the market has come.
At first, Cramer admitted he felt somewhat cautious about celebrating the milestone, thinking back to the Dow’s great losses over his decades-long career on Wall Street. But then Cramer remembered when the average was at 1,000, saying perhaps he should “demonstrate some confidence” in the market after all these immense gains.
“What the heck is the matter with celebrating when stocks go up? Don’t we want to make money?” he asked. “We have so much negativity that surrounds us. We’re drowning in it. All of a sudden, something positive falls into our laps, a major milestone is passed. Does it really make sense to scoff at it?”
The 30-stock Dow may not represent that market as much as other averages, he said, but stressed how the Dow’s record was a “team effort,” propelled by stocks in a variety of sectors beyond technology, including industrials, pharmaceuticals and banks. These companies should have been crushed by the Federal Reserve’s relentless rate hikes, inflation or supply chain issues during the Covid-19 pandemic, but they weren’t, he said.
To Cramer, investors don’t need to be” cheerleaders” for the market, per se. But it is important to recognize how well these stocks, and the companies behind them, have done over the years, he said.
“Sure, we can go down. We went from 1,000 to 777 when I got started,” he said. “I could’ve tossed the Dow 1,000 hat and gone and become a lawyer. I didn’t, and that was the right call.”
