Mad Money Recap

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Cramer's 'Mad Money' Recap: This Bud's for All

TheStreet.com Staff

Click here for an archive of Cramer's "Mad Money" recaps.

Companies that advertise during the Super Bowl, on average, tend to beat the market long term, Jim Cramer told viewers of his "Mad Money" TV show Monday.

"Rigorous homework" backs this theory up on Stockpickr.com.

As proof, Cramer named the top three Super Bowl advertisers for the last 20 years -- Anheuser-Busch (BUD), PepsiCo (PEP) and General Motors (GM).

"Despite GM holding the group back, if you owned these stocks for the last 20 years, you'd be up 739% vs. the S&P 500, which has been up 487%," Cramer said.

It might be hard to accept that watching Super Bowl ads is a way to make money, but comparing Bud's and Pepsi's performance even short term -- since 2000 -- shows both of these stocks beating the S&P, Cramer said.

Moreover, the top five advertisers from last year, which included Pepsi, Bud, Disney (DIS), Procter & Gamble (PG) and Time Warner (TWX), all saw an uptick in their prices in the three months after last year's Super Bowl, Cramer said.

However, this is not a license to buy any stock or to buy the stock of your favorite ad, he said. While buying expensive ad time during the game might be a sign that the company has lot of money, Cramer cautioned that there are always poseurs.

To differentiate between a great business that has lots of money to spend on ads and a company that just wants to make people think it is great but really doesn't have the money to spend on the ads, market players must do their homework, he stressed.

Instead of companies such as Garmin (GRMN), which don't have historical success from Super Bowl ads, stick with Bud or Pepsi -- "two of the more consistently great advertisers," Cramer advised.

Moreover, even though Diamond Foods (DMND), which also had a Super Bowl ad, doesn't deserve to be written off, its humorous ad shouldn't give Diamond as much of a boost because it's a smaller company than the others, he said.

Nevertheless, Cramer said he likes Diamond because it's expanding into the healthy snacks business, and he believes that the stock will travel higher.

The Super Bowl play doesn't necessarily entail buying the stocks that advertise during the game; rather, it entails doing homework on those companies and then deciding whether to buy.

Out of them all, he said he likes Bud the best.

Boomtown

People are scared that baby-boomer cash is dominating the market, but that fear is wrong, Cramer told viewers.

In fact, the baby boomers' desire to have "clear skin and hard bodies" is motivating them to save their cash, too, because they are convinced that they're going to live to be 100, he said.

"The baby boomers are working longer, living longer and investing longer," Cramer said. And because they keep saving, "the repositories of their money are one of the best plays on them." In turn, the money they are saving is being put into the hands of the best asset managers, he said.

Though Cramer said he likes brokerage company Goldman Sachs (GS), which he owns for his charitable trust, Action Alerts PLUS, "very much," the "real plays" on this trend are the pure asset managers.

His two picks are Legg Mason (LM) and T. Rowe Price (TROW).

Although Cramer is a fan of both companies -- based on the composition of the assets they manage -- he likes the fact that T. Rowe puts its money more into equities, whereas Legg Mason is more "bond heavy."

Top-Line Success

Cramer welcomed Roy Vallee, Avnet's (AVT) chairman and CEO, to the show and asked him why his company had such an unbelievable quarter.

"A lot of hard work," Vallee responded.

When Cramer asked Vallee how a distribution company (electronic components, enterprise network and computer products) such as Avnet is able to do better than the semiconductor companies it distributes to, Vallee said Avnet did a little bit better on the top line because it has a broad customer base across various industries.

Also, Vallee said the company's team worldwide did a great job.

Cramer called Avnet a "fabulous story," and said he should have included it in his list of tech stocks that people can own now.

To view Cramer's interview with Roy Vallee, please click here.

During his "Sudden Death" round, Cramer was bullish on Washington Mutual (WM) and Cisco (CSCO).

He was bearish on Ciena (CIEN) and Tellabs (TLAB).

Lightning Round

Cramer was bullish on Colgate-Palmolive (CL), NYSE Group (NYX), Respironics (RESP), Wyeth (WYE), Comcast (CMCSA), CA (CA) and World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE).

Cramer was bearish on Sirius Satellite Radio (SIRI), Rackable Systems (RACK), Par Pharmaceutical (PRX) and Informatica (INFA).

For more of Cramer's insights during the Lightning Round, click here.

Want more Cramer? Check out Jim's rules and commandments for investing from his popular book by clicking here.