Cramer: Why Selling Has Lost Its Appeal

This column was originally published on RealMoney on May 17 at 12:10 p.m. EDT. It's being republished as a bonus for TheStreet.com readers. For more information about subscribing to RealMoney, please click here.

Why aren't we down today? Let me take a stab at it: the bid for Acxiom(ACXM Quote) and the bid for Alliance Data(ADS Quote). These are two so-so companies that have been kicking around for a while with no real mission other than processing things. Database management. Credit card services. Loyalty and marketing services. All of that amorphous stuff that feels like First Data(FDC Quote).

You might have owned these stocks if you liked that industry. It's like owning Automatic Data(ADP Quote) or DST(DST Quote). Boring; fairly consistent.

They might as well be dozens of other companies, everything from Fair Isaac(FIC Quote) to Fiserv(FISV Quote). Unexceptional stock wallpaper.

To be, sure they had their champions. But my point is that these are basically humdrum, not-really-interesting stocks that just got very big bids -- the kinds of bids that, if you sell a lot of other companies, you run the risk of looking stupid when they too get bids.

These bids make it so you can't resist owning and buying. They have changed the risk/reward for owning hundreds upon hundreds of stocks,

That's why, in the end, we are up today.

It just doesn't make any sense to sell!