CNBC’s Jim Cramer said investors who fled the market during recent volatility may be grappling with a familiar realization that the worst-case scenarios driving their decisions never materialized.
“What we have is a rally that appears to be based on nothing,” said the “Mad Money” host on Tuesday. “But in reality, it’s based on the fact that most of the things we were worried about just didn’t happen.”
After weeks of declines tied to geopolitical tensions, private credit risks, and sluggish performance among many members of the influential “Magnificent Seven,” stocks have surged since March 30. The rally continued on Tuesday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average adding 318 points, or 0.66%, the S&P jumping 1.2% and the Nasdaq soaring 2%. The S&P 500 is now just inches from its all-time closing high on Jan. 27 — a powerful rebound that may have seemed improbable not long ago.
Cramer said this pattern is nothing new, noting that investors are often “scared out of the stock market” by dire predictions that ultimately fail to play out.
The most recent concerns stemmed from the Iran war, where investors feared a spike in oil prices and inflation would push interest rates sharply higher and derail the rally.
“If bond prices had gotten hit and rates had soared higher…the market would be in a real jam, but it just didn’t happen,” Cramer said, emphasizing that stable rates have remained “the real fuel to the rally.”
Even before the war broke out on Feb. 28, Wall Street had grown increasingly worried about stress in private credit, particularly tied to firms like Blue Owl Capital. The fears spilled over into the stocks of major alternative asset managers such as Blackstone, Apollo Global Management, and KKR.
However, Cramer said those concerns have yet to trigger the kind of systemic fallout many predicted. “The bears talked about this like it would bring down the entire private credit edifice, turning the whole group into roadkill,” Cramer said. “Guess what? It hasn’t happen.”
Investors also repeatedly wrote off the megacap technology stocks, Cramer said, with companies like Nvidia, Amazon and Google parent Alphabet facing a steady drumbeat of negative narratives from competitive threats to slowing growth. Yet those stocks have rebounded sharply, with AI chip giant Nvidia serving as a posterchild for the comeback.
Nvidia shares had been under pressure for months, bottoming near $165 on March 30, before rebounding to $196.51 as of Tuesday — their highest close since November.
For Cramer, the takeaway is that markets often move higher not because conditions are perfect, but because widely anticipated negatives fail to occur.
Still, he cautioned that the current rally may be stretched in the near term. “The easy money’s already been made,” he said, noting his Charitable Trust, the portfolio used by the CNBC Investing Club, has trimmed a couple positions this week.
But over the long term, Cramer said the lesson for investors is to stay disciplined and avoid being pushed out of the market by fear-driven narratives.
