RealMoney Silver - Market Forgiving of These Three

Market Forgiving of These Three
By Jim Cramer
RealMoney.com Columnist
1/3/2008 4:31 PM EST

Schlumberger (SLB) had a weak last quarter and it is now well above it. Same for FMC Technologies (FTI) and Chevron (CVX) . These are three disappointers that came right back and made you money.

It is amazing to me that these stocks have been totally forgiven, even as there is no sign -- other than the price of crude oil -- that things have improved. The market's totally forgiving about these.

Now, let's take a stock like CVS (CVS) . Here is a stock that is being sold hand-over-fist ahead of what no doubt is a host of downgrades because that's typical of what happens. There's no forgiveness for a stock like this that is out of favor. These aren't oil stocks.

I point out the dichotomy because we are, alas, running out of stocks that can be forgiven.

CVS represents the best of the slow-growth companies out there -- drugstore and pharmacy benefit management. That's probably the least cyclical of the retailers, but it doesn't matter.

This dichotomy is so dangerous. We have swapped many stocks that do well in slow growth, and we are plowing that money into the golds. The issue there is that there are only a few investable golds: Newmont (NEM) , Yamana (AUY) and Barrick (ABX) . There are dozens of chicken cyclicals like CVS.

We continue seeing good buying in a Coke (KO) or a Pepsi (PEP) or a Morris (MO) . But Procter & Gamble (PG) and Clorox (CLX) have since reversed.

Also worrisome.

Random musings: Blown away by how bad tech is today. Intel (INTC) , Dell (DELL) , the SOX, even EMC (EMC) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) !! All recession signs.

At the time of publication, Cramer was long Altria, CVS and Hewlett-Packard.

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