TheStreet.com TV Recap: Three Stocks for the Long Haul
TheStreet.com Staff
12/21/07 - 03:04 PM EST
Three stocks that are good for the long term and that Jim Cramer talks about in his new book,
Stay Mad For Life, are
Caterpillar (CAT Quote),
Goldman Sachs (GS Quote) and
ConocoPhillips (COP Quote), all of which he owns for his charitable trust,
Action Alerts PLUS.
The first one, Caterpillar, is up 16% for the year but sells at what Cramer regards as being a very low level on the basis of its earnings because of housing, he said on TheStreet.com TV's Wall St. Confidential Web video Friday.
Cramer: 3 Stocks for the Long Term |
| |
"If you believe that the housing recession will last five years, then I'm going to be completely wrong on the stock for the long term," Cramer said. He believes people should buy CAT now with the expectation that 18 months from now the housing cycle will restart.
"It's a perception issue," he said. "CAT is doing everything it can ... to get away from housing being the fulcrum of its business. They can't move fast enough because housing continues to deteriorate."
However, if investors approach the stock the way he has in previous years, which is buying it when things are bad, this is the moment, Cramer said. Things are very bad for its housing division, but not for the rest of the business. "It's a very big international company," he said.
Moving on, Cramer called Goldman Sachs "an excellent company" as it hedges risk. "If you hedge risk you make a lot of money in the brokerage business because there are no collateral issues," he said. "You already have the collateral in the firm, but Goldman's risk profile is extraordinarily good, and that's what you're buying when you're buying Goldman."
Another one of his long-term picks, ConocoPhillips, is a company that paid a lot of money to buy Burlington Resources, a big natural gas company, Cramer said. It looked stupid then, and it still doesn't look too bright now, but Cramer considers Jim Mulva, Conoco's chief executive, to be very smart.
"My take is politicians will eventually rediscover natural gas," he said. Everybody talks about the idea of nuclear power and the idea of coal, "but our real surplus is in natural gas, which is at the same price it was when oil was at $50."
"If you believe that, then COP has the brightest future of all the integrated oils," Cramer said.
