Web Selling Is Overdone

How about the Web ennui we are seeing? Look at this trashing, as Yahoo! (YHOO - commentary - Cramer's Take) has lost its takeover appeal; Google (GOOG - commentary - Cramer's Take) wasn't able to show a huge number, or at least a huge enough number to exceed the loss of the extra income from cash; and eBay (EBAY - commentary - Cramer's Take) was just a disaster. I was hoping that eBay might turn out to be the Wal-Mart (WMT - commentary - Cramer's Take) of this downturn, a way to be a buyer or seller of merchandise cheaply. Nope. Amazon (AMZN - commentary - Cramer's Take) hasn't been able to challenge $70 after a prolonged period where it had some real levitation. Microsoft (MSFT - commentary - Cramer's Take) said there's nothing really exciting happening on the Web, and America Online seems to have little momentum.

And you know what? I am not buying it. Maybe I spend too much time looking at what Gannett (GCI - commentary - Cramer's Take), New York Times (NYT - commentary - Cramer's Take) and McClatchy (MNI - commentary - Cramer's Take) are saying, or what is happening in the magazine division of Time Warner (TWX - commentary - Cramer's Take) or what I see happening in television, which just doesn't have a lot of upswing.

I can't imagine how bad it is at the Tribune Corp.. People can only speculate how bad those private newspapers are doing. Advertisers are moving to the Web by the month. It is true that there is a cyclical downturn in spending, but what you have to believe is that when the advertising comes back -- and it always does come back -- very little of it will return to newspapers and only some to magazines, although I think cable TV will be OK, which is why I keep a position in Discovery (DISCA - commentary - Cramer's Take) for Action Alerts PLUS.

I think it is radically wrong to write off the Web. I believe that each of these major Web plays has its own set of problems, but the overall trends remain positive and can be played to the long side.

The selling to me is overdone in Google. But nobody wants to get in front of that juggernaut until it settles. It remains my favorite big-cap way to play the Web.

Random musings: You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, so it is remarkable that Dick Bove gets sued for defamation by BankAtlantic (BBX - commentary - Cramer's Take). Meanwhile, Doug Kass has been on those these guys for ages and I think would have kept you out just as easily as he put you in Lehman (LEH - commentary - Cramer's Take) at the bottom. ... Talk about some fabulous reporting that would have saved you a fortune -- Melissa Davis' stuff on ArthroCare (ARTC - commentary - Cramer's Take) was worth its weight in gold!

At the time of publication, Cramer was long Wal-Mart and Discovery.

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