For those weak at heart (The Sky is falling!!!!!)Cramer Says: (Beware of the Paper transactions)
Investors tend to assume that when the price of oil tanks, as it did today with its $4 decline, than there must be something wrong with the fundamentals.
What if it the oil market is just like the stock market, and the buyers and sellers are actually controlling the market?
Cramer doesn't think this is a ridiculous idea. He suspects that the real force that is controlling the price of crude is the buyers and sellers themselves, as a result of forced liquidations and margin calls among overly bullish hedge funds. To gain further clarification the "Mad Money" host turned to Carley Garner, technician and co-founder of DeCarley Trading to explain how this could really happen.
According to Garner's research—based on a chart of the West Texas crude that shows CFTC's commitments of the big institutional players—in June, speculators were holding net long positions in crude futures. When the price in oil began to fall, the speculators in the market began to suffer losses as a result. However, the hedge funds selling crude did not sell, and are now being forced to sell because they bought these future contracts on margin. Now that the value of these contracts has dropped, the margin clerks at investment banks are requiring them to put up more capital or sell their positions.
Garner indicated that the price of oil may continue to go down until these forced liquidations are completed. "Worse case, Garner sees oil bottoming in the high $70s, and at that point, she expects a big rebound, because crude is already in incredibly oversold territory that almost demands a bounce," Cramer said.
Here is the good news: Cramer thinks that as soon as the weak handed bulls have finished selling, the markets will reverse when they are flushed out.