Fuzzy Implications

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It's not like you can raise numbers or anything. An election is difficult to quantify in terms of what you should pay up. Is Bush worth two points to a drug stock? Three points to Merck (MRK:NYSE - news - boards) because it has a high concentration of drugs taken by the elderly? If you get to jam some stocks into your Social Security account in 2004, does Schwab (SCH:NYSE - news - boards) get a lot of that business? How about Merrill Lynch (MER:NYSE - news - boards)? Does the heat die down for a Mister Softee (MSFT:Nasdaq - news - boards) breakup and does the government stop pressuring tobacco?

To me, these are all amorphous, gooey positive choices. But the simple truth is that I like number bumps and you can't bump numbers off this election. Oddly, if Gore had won and gotten the Senate to go Democratic, I think you could have made a case to cut the numbers for the drug stocks based on the predicted change in government purchasing of drugs for Medicare. And it is not like 1980, where Reagan basically told you to get long the defense stocks -- there were tons of them then -- because he intended to "rearm" the country. Those stocks took off for weeks and weeks and had a massive run. I don't think you can make that case now, although more spending is clearly in the cards.

I don't buy the drilling deal either. Shoot, if we had more land to drill (other than land contested by environmentalists), it would be one thing. But we don't. Finite and no number bumps. You can feel better about the drillers, but you can't invest on "nicer climate" alone. So we end up with a touchy-feely thing on which I don't want to bank too heavily. And we have to start watching the bond market because we can pretty much be assured that Bush isn't going to pay down the debt the way Clinton did. In sum, not much to take here. Back to an earnings game. It's about time.

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James J. Cramer is manager of a hedge fund and co-founder of TheStreet.com. At time of publication, his fund was long Merck, Microsoft and Schwab. His fund often buys and sells securities that are the subject of his columns, both before and after the columns are published, and the positions that his fund takes may change at any time. Under no circumstances does the information in this column represent a recommendation to buy or sell stocks. Cramer's writings provide insights into the dynamics of money management and are not a solicitation for transactions. While he cannot provide investment advice or recommendations, he invites you to send comments on his column to James J. Cramer .