Cramer: Why Sears Keeps on Rising

This item was originally published for Action Alerts PLUS on June 1 at 11:30 a.m. ET. It's being republished as a bonus for TheStreet.com readers. For more information about subscribing to Action Alerts PLUS, please click here.

Why did Sears(SHLD Quote - Cramer on SHLD - Stock Picks) spike today? It certainly wasn't anything I saw about the substance of the business; remember, its earnings report Thursday was far from spectacular.

I think it spiked because of the share count. Two numbers tell the story: 153.7 million and 152,492,175 shares. That's the number of shares that were listed in the quarterly release and the number of shares listed in the 10q just released today. That means Eddie Lampert bought back 1.2 million shares between May 5 and May 25.

This is significant because in the last quarter Sears bought back no stock and in the quarter before that it repurchased only 82,363 shares.

The stock ranged from $175 to $182 during the buying period. That means the lowest price Sears could have paid was $175, the highest price $182.52. Again, while we don't know the average price paid for those 1.2 million shares, we do know that it is higher than the $164.91 paid in the fourth quarter. That's very important.

Sears has a ton of cash, more than $3 billion. At this pace, if Eddie miraculously paid the low for all of that stock, he would go through the part of the $600 million buyback authorization that remained as of the press release in about 60 days. When that's gone, I believe he will authorize another one.

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