Lay Off Buffett

I'm getting queasy on this Buffett thing. The stock-picking's been horrendous of late, the buys just dead wrong.

But I am beginning to feel guilty. Doug's right, the salad days might be over.

However, I feel like I am lumping in Buffett with Bill Miller, the unfortunate totally momentum-driven manager at Legg Mason (LM - commentary - Cramer's Take) who is now feeling like an emperor with thin raiments.

First, most managers are doing awfully. I am totally cognizant, however, that most managers -- including Miller -- do not have that skein of outperformance, of fabulous performance, that gives Buffett not several quarters of grace, but several years of grace, and those years are not exhausted in my book.

Second, nobody said you had to stick with Buffett. The bulls have been total pigs in this name.

Third, and most important, if Buffett were to come in right now and buy all of his stocks, the GE (GE - commentary - Cramer's Take), the Goldman Sachs (GS - commentary - Cramer's Take), the Wells Fargo (WFC - commentary - Cramer's Take), the U.S. Bancorp (USB - commentary - Cramer's Take) that we know he has been dead wrong on, and if the market were to come back, I feel like I would have doubted this man at the bottom. Same with Burlington Northern (BNI - commentary - Cramer's Take). All of them act as if he is in there averaging down right now!

Maybe Buffett deserves better.

Am I saying is Buffett sainted?

You know what? Given his lifetime of successful investing, I think yes. Is he Willie Mays, unable to hit second from center field because he wants to hang on?

I think that in this market almost every major money manager is that late-day Willie Mays, but they were never the real Mays to begin with.

Or, to look at it practically, I would be a buyer of pretty much every one of Buffett's positions right here, right now.

So the bottom line, as much as I understand and respect and even agree that the man's got some clunkers, he's the only man in the universe who is allowed to have them, and unlike how I feel about the Bill Millers, the momentum players, I would be buying with Buffett right here if he were averaging down, and not against him.

At the time of publication, Cramer was long GE, Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo.

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