Hit by a BUD Beer Truck

 

We ran into a BUD(BUD Quote) beer truck going $60 earlier in the week. Others of you might have overdosed on Bristol-Myers (BMY Quote) 5 points ago or drank a little Clorox (CLX Quote) cocktail at $45. In each of these cases, supposedly safe stocks slaughtered anybody who sampled the merchandise.

This was a week where people got killed in safety, where they thought how much lower could Coke (KO Quote) or McDonald's(MCD Quote) or Pfizer (PFE Quote) go and they discovered that the answer was: much.

Of course, you could say that all this was more than compensated for by the billions in market cap tacked on by an InfoSpace(INSP Quote) or a Commerce One(CMRC Quote). But stocks aren't meant to be zero sum games. It seems that the whole world, indexing, growth and value, has decided en masse to use any good news from "plain old stocks" -- POS?! -- like a buy back or a great quarter, to exit.

The effect is extremely debilitating. When we got hit by Anheuser Busch going $60, then braking to $57, we hardly knew what had hit us. It happened in an instant. We barely got the license plate number.

It's one thing to own a stock and have it do nothing or underperform on a weekly basis. But to be in a Blue Chip and discover that it trades like a White Chip -- forget Red -- is shocking. We now bear bruises from buying POS even as we parade around proudly with our Nokias (NOK Quote) and Oracles(ORCL Quote).

It's enough to make you stay away from anything that you've ever owned before and embrace only the most speculative of securities because the speculative stuff doesn't fall as fast as BUD!

What a weird era. What a relief it's Friday. How about a betting pool for where the Dow goes out today? In the office pool I have 9900.

Random musings: Don't forget to call in and ask me about stocks on our show. I don't use any of that "long-term hold" stuff, either. Much stronger brew served here.

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James J. Cramer is manager of a hedge fund and co-founder of TheStreet.com. At time of publication, his fund was long InfoSpace, Nokia and Oracle. His fund often buys and sells securities that are the subject of his columns, both before and after the columns are published, and the positions that his fund takes may change at any time. Under no circumstances does the information in this column represent a recommendation to buy or sell stocks. Cramer's writings provide insights into the dynamics of money management and are not a solicitation for transactions. While he cannot provide investment advice or recommendations, he invites you to comment on his column at jjcletters@thestreet.com.




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