The Easy Money Ain't in Tech By James J. Cramer 7/27/01 1:23 PM ET

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We've got some peculiar anomalies worth trading off of. They just aren't in tech. The best one of the week was, of all things, Chevron (CHV:NYSE - news - commentary).

Because of a mid-week sense that oil would not ever go up, oil stocks got pummeled when they reported. Chevron had the bad luck to report on the same day as Exxon Mobil (XOM:NYSE - news - commentary), which reported a rare miss and shook everyone up in this now very under-followed segment.

Chevron, on the other hand, reported a strong number. Even more important, Texaco (TX:NYSE - news - commentary), which will be owned by Chevron the next time Chevron reports, announced a truly blow-out number.

The market, which is ultra-wise about things like JDS Uniphase and Corning, doesn't bother to scrutinize stocks like CHV and TX. Yet, in the span of a couple of days, Chevron went from $84 to $91. Given that Chevron yielded 3% at its low -- a little less than cash, but not much -- you had a pretty easy trade in what everyone knows is a hard market. More important, those options-oriented people could have bought some August 80 calls pretty flat with the common and caught a double. Remember when doubles were only the province of tech?

Stop playing where everyone is, and start playing where fewer are, and you will make more money.

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