China Is Tempting

Not a lot of hope with the ECB. They continue to flounder and do nothing to indicate that they see a crisis, but that's not the case in China. The Chinese government cannot afford to have China fall off a cliff, and statements from them this weekend about how oil consumption has been cut back warn that the government has to step up the pace.

With rates at 6.66% and with a big stimulus program announced, there could be a lot of ways to win in China. That's because they can always accelerate the stimulus (controlled economy don't forget), and they have ample room to cut rates, unlike the U.S. Don't forget that the market there is down 61%, so you haven't missed anything.

Not only that but we are also seeing a bottoming of the Baltic freight rates, and that's really positive.

I think that there are two ways to play this potential turn. One is Nordic Tankers, and that can be bought right now because it still makes good money even at these incredibly low rates. It just has the lowest cost structure and the least debt.

The other, more speculative (and perhaps too early) would be the China Fund (CHN - commentary - Cramer's Take). I am still on the fence on this one. I would love to see Helene Meisler come out on this one as I don't want to go against a technician on a market that is very technically oriented, but I do think that the China Fund is at a crucial level, and I find it tempting. My reluctance to pull the trigger on the China Fund is that the market is up 15% in a week. Too quick a move, and I need a pullback.

Random musings: Doug Kass is calling for a big year-end rally. His record is too good this year to ignore. I want to take this market a day at a time because there has been so much damage to the market and to companies, and we are only in the first quarter of the downturn.

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Know What You Own: The China Fund operates in the closed-end foreign fund industry, and some of the other stocks in its field include Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income Fund (FAX - commentary - Cramer's Take), Templeton Global Income Fund (GIM - commentary - Cramer's Take), India Fund (INF - commentary - Cramer's Take), Templeton Dragon Fund (TDF - commentary - Cramer's Take), Templeton Emerging Markets Income Fund (TEI - commentary - Cramer's Take) and ASA Limited (ASA - commentary - Cramer's Take). For more on the value of knowing what you own, visit TheStreet.com's Investing A-to-Z section.

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

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