The Buck's Bull Case

One hundred billion in euros for dollars, please! That's the InBev-Roche bill coming due for their acquisitions of American companies.

Right now, nobody seems to care that we are seeing some real demand for dollars from these companies. It is almost as if they don't matter. Plus, we sure ship enough dollars overseas because of oil that you can believe it doesn't matter much.

But I keep wondering how many more deals are out there, how many more deals will take advantage of the big declines. I wonder if the dollar won't strengthen simply because we may be sending fewer overseas because the price of oil is plummeting so hard and going lower.

To date, we have seen no industrial takeovers, which is the real shocker, especially when you get numbers like we got from Caterpillar (CAT - commentary - Cramer's Take) today. We have so many industrial companies that are simply shrinking daily because of buybacks and a weak dollar that it is amazing to me that we haven't seen these. I wonder if Dow Chemical (DOW - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Cleveland-Cliffs (CLF - commentary - Cramer's Take) didn't do defensive acquisitions in the last few weeks in order to ward off attacks by European companies that are hungry for U.S. properties. Those would have been natural to pick up. I also can't believe that Hercules (HPC - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Rohm & Hass (ROH - commentary - Cramer's Take) hadn't been bought already.

There is a tremendous herd instinct in Europe once the companies there believe that the dollar has bottomed or is bottoming. They do not want to miss the bottom. I can only imagine the interest that Cadbury or Nestle has right now in Campbell (CPB - commentary - Cramer's Take) or Heinz (HNZ - commentary - Cramer's Take) (and, believe me, Hershey (HSY - commentary - Cramer's Take) if the darned Milton Hershey Trust didn't continually say the company's not for sale). These companies are all small-cap now that the dollar's come down so much and they have brought in so much stock.

I have always been concerned that we can't get a real bottom in the dollar until we stop printing so many, and that doesn't seem like it is possible. But we are seeing a lot of money being taken out of the stock market through these big deals (too bad we have so many financials hungry for money, because given the dearth of new offerings, we would possibly be talking about a stock shortage!), and we are seeing some fundamental demand for dollars.

These trends make me more bullish, not bearish. And I have to point them out.

Random musings: I'm so tempted to buy the S&P Homebuilders SPDR (XHB - commentary - Cramer's Take) for a trade ahead of any federal legislation to help housing. ... I still expect that there will be more IndyMacs, I am just saying we are now in better shape to handle them because of a few good banks. I am using Helene Meisler's judgment on the overbought/oversold case on the banks. ...

At the time of publication, Cramer had no positions in the stocks mentioned.

ALL JIM CRAMER BLOG ENTRIES | POST A COMMENT | READ COMMENTS  

---

Jim Cramer is a director and co-founder of TheStreet.com. He contributes daily market commentary for TheStreet.com's sites and serves as an adviser to the company's CEO. Outside contributing columnists for TheStreet.com and RealMoney.com, including Cramer, may, from time to time, write about stocks in which they have a position. In such cases, appropriate disclosure is made. To see his personal portfolio and find out what trades Cramer will make before he makes them, sign up for Action Alerts PLUS. Watch Cramer on "Mad Money" weeknights on CNBC. To order Cramer's newest book -- "Jim Cramer's Stay Mad for Life: Get Rich, Stay Rich (Make Your Kids Even Richer)," click here. Click here to order "Mad Money: Watch TV, Get Rich," click here to order "Real Money: Sane Investing in an Insane World," click here to get "You Got Screwed!" and click here for Cramer's autobiography, "Confessions of a Street Addict." While he cannot provide personalized investment advice or recommendations, he appreciates your feedback and invites you to send comments by clicking here.

TheStreet.com has a revenue-sharing relationship with Amazon.com under which it receives a portion of the revenue from Amazon.com purchases by customers directed there from TheStreet.com.