RealMoney Silver - Cramer on Top Searched Stocks: Wal-Mart

Cramer on Top Searched Stocks: Wal-Mart
By James Altucher
RealMoney.com Contributor
5/14/2008 11:25 AM EDT

Updated from 7:02 a.m. EDT

Iran's plan to cut crude oil production helped boost oil to a new record price of nearly $127 a barrel Tuesday. Meanwhile, gas prices set a new record of $3.73 a gallon. Indicators suggest no immediate slowdown to the escalating price of gas, with the summer driving season just around the corner.

So what does this mean for stocks? Well, not much if you look at the market over the last few days. The major indices have been relatively strong in the face of all of this action in oil.

Wal-Mart (WMT) offered a cautious outlook and we saw home prices post their steepest drop in the last quarter century.

With all of this news out there, we thought it made sense to take a look at Tuesday's Top 10 Most Searched Stocks on TheStreet.com and find out what Jim Cramer's take has recently been on them.

Top Ten Most Searched Stocks on TheStreet.com

These stocks could be in the news for a number of reasons. Some require immediate attention while others may not. But it never hurts to hear what Cramer (or any of the other professional investors on the site) has to say about them. The key is to gather as much information as you can in order to make the most informed investment decisions you can.

Although Icahn is reportedly contemplating a proxy fight at Yahoo! (YHOO) over the failed Microsoft (MSFT) deal, we'll kick it off today with Wal-Mart.

Cramer laid out his latest view on Wal-Mart in a May 13 post on his RealMoney.com blog:

"Wal-Mart's right. Stop freaking out.
The company is conservative. This is the moment where Wal-Mart shines, and the company has gone through a period where it forecasted way too high for a long time -- they aren't going to let that happen again.
One of my major problems with Wal-Mart in the last few years was that they kept saying things were better than they turned out to be. That's why I believe that you have to take their guidance with an ounce of UPOD (underpromise and overdeliver).
Lee Scott has done some remarkable things since he realized that the company was losing its lead to others. He's made the stores better and made you feel "richer" when you go. As someone who likes to shop at Target (TGT) , Costco (COST) and Wal-Mart, the last one has changed. Meanwhile, the prices are ridiculously cheap and the stores are everywhere. Is there anything better right now than being the cheapest and one of the best in both foods and hard goods?
Wal-Mart should be bought on this weakness. You just got another great chance."

Next on the list is Apple (AAPL) .

Cramer gave his latest take on the iPhone maker in another post on his RealMoney blog Tuesday:

"We've been where we are right now for leadership. In much of the 1990s, it was Cisco (CSCO) , Intel (INTC) and Microsoft (MSFT) , with an occasional help/hurt from Oracle (ORCL) and a 'maybe significant' from Nortel (NT) or Qualcomm (QCOM) .
Now it's Apple (AAPL) , Research In Motion (RIMM) , Google (GOOG) and MasterCard (MA) , the last not tech but somehow represents a kind of financial tech that people get behind endlessly. Periodically we key off of Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and IBM (IBM) , but if you only use one stock to know which way the wind blows, it's Apple.
First, I want to say that you shouldn't mind this narrow-minded focus. Whole bull markets have been powered by narrow-thinking portfolio managers just following the herd and then taking their cue from it to buy other stocks.
Apple's an event stock, not an earnings stock, which means you can keep buying it until the event. You can't justify buying Apple at all on earnings. It's entirely product introduction and shortage-based. RIMM's one, too. Again, hard to fathom. The animal spirits demonstrated for both yesterday confounded those of us who do homework because these were all telegraphs. The iPhone's in short supply and loved. The new BlackBerry is good, did anyone think or hear otherwise?
I have advised owning calls on these stocks, deep-in-the-moneys out several months, trading around them with common on spikes because they can be fickle.
Yesterday was a good day to sell the spike. But any pullback, particularly on Apple, must be bought because the iPhone reiteration will most likely be the tech product of the year.
Once it's out, though, the fervor will cool, and then it might be on to the next stock, at least for a while."

For more opinions on Tuesday's top searched stocks, including Circuit City (CC) and Blockbuster (BBI) , check out Cramer's Take on Top 10 Most-Searched Stocks From May 13.

Jim Cramer writes about all the stock trades in his charitable trust for TheStreet.com in Action Alerts Plus. Recent stocks he's traded in this account include Schering-Plough (SPG) , Yamana Gold (AUY) and Inverness Medical (IMA) .