Investing
Jim Cramer's Best Blogs
Jim Cramer
04/26/08 - 10:14 AM EDT
Jim Cramer fills his blog on RealMoney every day with his up-to-the-minute reactions to what's happening in the market and his legendary ahead-of-the-crowd ideas. This week he blogged on:
- Apple's gadgets
- Inflation fears
- The market's amnesia
My Daughter Is the Apple Bull Case
Originally published on Tuesday, April 22, at 9:07 a.m. Last time it was the iPod. Or more accurately, the second iPod. That's what my 12-year-old daughter wanted after she had gotten an iPod for the holidays. It was her birthday, six months after I had given her the iPod and she said she needed the second one. Why? Because the first one was blue and now she needed pink. As I explained in Stay Mad for Life, I learned the truth: Apple's (AAPL Quote - Cramer on AAPL - Stock Picks) iPod had become the ultimate accessory. Just like she couldn't have enough jewelry, she could not get enough iPods. For this year's holiday present, she asked for an iMac. She had an old, beat-up Hewlett-Packard (HPQ Quote - Cramer on HPQ - Stock Picks), so I didn't mind. She's artistic, takes classes at Parsons, said she needed it for design. She really needed it for iChat, for conversation, for video conversation. I didn't know it at the time. We live in Jersey, and she has a friend who moved from our area to Philadelphia and she wanted to talk to her and see her. I had to admit, it was pretty cool. iChat -- instant messaging with video -- is fabulous and my kids are pointing me toward this current remarkable Apple run. This weekend at 11:30 I told her it was time to go to bed. She was in the office, with the iMac. She didn't want to listen to me. I threw on some sweats over my boxers -- half on, half off -- and staggered in and said, "It's time ..." and I was interrupted by her friend Julia saying, "Hi Mr. Cramer!" I was mortified. She was on iChat ... saw me plain as day. And in the last two months, most of my daughter's friends have ripped out the old computers and brought in the iMac because of this feature. You are being pressured to get it despite its costs, and suddenly it seems that everyone needs a new PC. If they put this product on the iPhone, my daughter will switch from Verizon (VZ Quote - Cramer on VZ - Stock Picks) -- which she loves -- to AT&T (T Quote - Cramer on T - Stock Picks). It is that important, that cool. I recommended Apple when my daughter asked for the second one. I have been pushing Apple pretty relentlessly since the year began after telling people to sell it before the holidays. This is the real deal. You see it, you will get it. More important, like the iPod, your kids see it, you will have to get it for them. Regardless of the economy. Random musings: The power of the iPhone is readily apparent in the AT&T earnings. ... A terrific reader mentions that the Corsairs of the world can take a five-year perspective, which very well may pay off for some of these banks. Sounds plausible, but oh boy is Nat City (NCC Quote - Cramer on NCC - Stock Picks) bad -- so bad that even the aggressive folks at Key wouldn't buy it and I figured they would just do it for share. At the time of publication, Cramer had no positions in the stocks mentioned.Dow Looks Safe From Credit, Food Inflation
Originally published on Friday, April 25, at 9:25 a.m. I want to be a bear! Housing prices down huge. Food prices up huge. Employment down huge. Gasoline up huge. But let me ask you, what happens if something goes right? It's obvious that everything is going wrong, and the usual refrain is that the market must be killed because of it. However, you just need to go through the Dow Jones Industrial Average to grasp the lack of import there is to these issues. Pfizer (PFE Quote - Cramer on PFE - Stock Picks)? Merck (MRK Quote - Cramer on MRK - Stock Picks)? Johnson & Johnson (JNJ Quote - Cramer on JNJ - Stock Picks), AT&T (T Quote - Cramer on T - Stock Picks)? Wal-Mart (WMT Quote - Cramer on WMT - Stock Picks)? Merrill upgrades today. They all do fine in this environment. American Express (AXP Quote - Cramer on AXP - Stock Picks)? Fine short until yesterday. United Technologies (UTX Quote - Cramer on UTX - Stock Picks) and Caterpillar (CAT Quote - Cramer on CAT - Stock Picks) already reported terrific quarters in this environment. Boeing (BA Quote - Cramer on BA - Stock Picks) did, too. And the outlook for all three is actually better than it was before because of secular concerns going their way and a terrific weak-dollar story. Same with McDonald's (MCD Quote - Cramer on MCD - Stock Picks), which is doing so well internationally that we have a "who cares" domestic story. IBM (IBM Quote - Cramer on IBM - Stock Picks) blew numbers away and is very cheap. Don't look to Chevron (CVX Quote - Cramer on CVX - Stock Picks) or Exxon (XOM Quote - Cramer on XOM - Stock Picks) for weakness in this environment. Nor Du Pont (DD Quote - Cramer on DD - Stock Picks), which is propounding insulation and seeds, two sweet spots. (This is Day Three of the oil decline, which points to Monday buying.) I don't expect Verizon (VZ Quote - Cramer on VZ - Stock Picks) to be that deviant from AT&T. Coke (KO Quote - Cramer on KO - Stock Picks) was fine, and I don't expect Procter (PG Quote - Cramer on PG - Stock Picks) to be any worse. If we get a turn, Home Depot (HD Quote - Cramer on HD - Stock Picks) is the No. 1 name.Hope Springs Eternal When You Have No Memory
Originally published on Thursday, April 24, at 3:30 p.m. It's incredibly frustrating to be a short-seller, because the market has no memory. The stocks that on a percentage basis are up the most in the financial world are the ones that are the biggest losers in a Gang of Four collapse: Citigroup (C Quote - Cramer on C - Stock Picks), Fannie (FNM Quote - Cramer on FNM - Stock Picks) and Freddie (FRE Quote - Cramer on FRE - Stock Picks), and Merrill (MER Quote - Cramer on MER - Stock Picks). These have the most to lose if Ambac (ABK Quote - Cramer on ABK - Stock Picks) or MBIA (MBI Quote - Cramer on MBI - Stock Picks) or PMI (PMI Quote - Cramer on PMI - Stock Picks) or MGIC (MTG Quote - Cramer on MTG - Stock Picks) go under. Yesterday's decline was the real deal, or so we thought. The credit losses if the Gang of Four goes under will overwhelm all the happy talk from Merrill or the ability to keep FNM/FRE's equity from disappearing. No matter; these stocks are going up on the strong dollar -- totally ephemeral -- and the moronic notion that Merrill's all fat and happy now that the dividend is declared. Why not? They just raised billions in capital. How could it not be? Now let me say, I think that a long Goldman (GS Quote - Cramer on GS - Stock Picks) short Merrill trade makes sense. I don't think that Merrill has that much earnings power. It won't go out of business, but it might not make a lot of money. I say Lehman (LEH Quote - Cramer on LEH - Stock Picks) and Morgan (MS Quote - Cramer on MS - Stock Picks) are in similar boats, but I think that Merrill just can't make big numbers, period. This is a total "hope springs eternal" day. Pulte's (PHM Quote - Cramer on PHM - Stock Picks) up, the worst is over. Homebuilders rock! They survived the HGX channel bottom. AIG (AIG Quote - Cramer on AIG - Stock Picks)is up -- was it never bad? So what if ABK isn't going to make good, AIG won't need it!! That's how it trades. Oh, and how about this one: Goldman's up huge and the chart is now great!! I actually agree with that one. (In case you don't think that a lot of this (but not all) is a short squeeze, ask yourself -- who buys Goldman Sachs up 9 when there is no news?) If the bottom is in, then JPMorgan (JPM Quote - Cramer on JPM - Stock Picks) was brilliant. Today we believe that there are saviors everywhere and that the saviors are winning, a la Washington Mutual (WM Quote - Cramer on WM - Stock Picks), where everybody who put money in is money good! Makes you want to go buy Sovereign (SOV Quote - Cramer on SOV - Stock Picks)! We even like MGIC! If you are a bear, you are thinking, "Wait, did the market forget what happened with ABK yesterday?" The answer, crazily, is a resounding "Yes!" Random musings: Retail gets a huge move out of drop in employment claims. I am a seller into any strength of this group. But the "hope springs eternal" crowd loves spring, warm weather, Mother's Day, jobless claims and $600 rebates. ... Still too early to buy ag, let 'em come in. ITT Educational Services (ESI Quote - Cramer on ESI - Stock Picks) shows you that when you deliver numbers in a bad cohort, there are a lot of shorts panicking. ... How about that MasterCard (MA Quote - Cramer on MA - Stock Picks) and Visa (V Quote - Cramer on V - Stock Picks) as ways to play, well, anything! They are totally loved endlessly. ... Phillips-Van Heusen's (PVH Quote - Cramer on PVH - Stock Picks) stock says -- at least to me -- go back to VF Corp. (VFC Quote - Cramer on VFC - Stock Picks), which did hit the number. ... Apple (AAPL Quote - Cramer on AAPL - Stock Picks)? Not done. ... Salesforce.com (CRM Quote - Cramer on CRM - Stock Picks) is overwhelming the shorts. At the time of publication, Cramer was long Goldman Sachs. |
 |