Jim Cramer's Best Blogs

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, when he wasn't rolling out a special series on the Bear Stearns subprime-led mortgage crisis, he blogged on:

• the market's seven deadly sins;
• why this market marches to the beat of the oil drum; and
• 12 summer tech stocks ripe for the buying.

Click here for information on RealMoney.com, where you can see all the blogs, including Jim Cramer's -- and reader comments -- in real time.

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The Market's Seven Deadly Sins

Originally published on July 3 at 7:54 a.m. EDT

This column is not for me or for anyone who believes in my intermediate-term view that the Dow Jones Industrial Average will head to 14,500 by year-end.

Sell.

That's right. We are having a nice rally. It is occurring despite the following:

1. The subprime explosion, which many believe will not stop until it erodes everything from PMI (PMI Quote) and MBIA (MBI Quote) to Bear Stearns (BSC Quote) and Countrywide (CFC Quote).
2. Interest rates could head back to 5.25% or, even worse, the dreaded 5.5%!
3. The Fed may actually tighten.
4. The buyout game is over because Blackstone's (BX Quote) offering was a bust and because U.S. Foodservice is having trouble raising money.
5. Hedge funds are blowing up left and right because of CDOs.
6. Oil is going to $80.
7. Housing is going from horrible to catastrophic, with defaults on a dramatic increase.

All of these seven deadly sins could occur. All of these negatives are going to be with us for months. They can't be put to bed by anything, including common sense. They will be constant themes of the media. Every time they are brought up, they will hurt stocks. They have adherents that can come to the fore at any given moment. They are sexy stories that are meant to attract viewers and therefore scare you.

Because of these worries, you will continue to see pressure on the Goldmans (GS Quote), Lehmans (LEH Quote), Bears, Citigroups (C Quote) and all sort of financial companies that have even brushed up against mortgages.

You can't own anything that has to do with machinery and housing because of this (think Caterpillar (CAT Quote)).

You can't be involved in anything retail or restaurant because the consumer has to be strapped by these combinations. That means J.C. Penney (JCP Quote), Kohl's (KSS Quote), Lowe's (LOW Quote), Home Depot (HD Quote), Wal-Mart (WMT Quote), Sears (SHLD Quote) and the like.

You can't own any of the new hedge fund and buyout fund stocks, so Blackrock (BFD Quote) goes, as does Fortress (FIG Quote).

Even tech has to be avoided, at least consumer tech like Corning (GLW Quote), Intel (INTC Quote), Dell (DELL Quote) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ Quote).

And, of course, anything that seemed attractive to the LBO people, like a Barnes & Noble (BKS Quote) or a Cheesecake Factory (CAKE Quote), and anything casino-oriented have to go. Obviously, every publicly traded homebuilder could go to zero.

This whole litany of stocks will always be weakened by the rumors of these stories.

So sell if you can't handle it. You have an up tape for the second day in a row. You know the media have to keep the drumbeat of negativity about all of these topics.

So why not sell? Why not get out? Why do you bother to endure these woes?

I think you should get out. Most of the people I interact with who are unsure about stocks should just dump stocks and move on to something else, maybe bonds or real estate.

Why don't I get out? I have made a lot of money in the market. I could cash out my charitable trust, Action Alerts PLUS, just focus on municipal bonds and just stop thinking about all of this.

But I don't because there have always been worries in the market. At every juncture since 1200 on the Dow, I have heard that horrible things are about to occur, dreaded things that will kill all my stocks.

The bears, many of whom have been with us the whole way, have done their very best to keep us prudent and out of the market. They are so persuasive and so frightening that I think they would scare anyone other than the people who have made a lot of money and know the truth, given the long-range performance of equities. They are awfully hard either to bet against or to leave the table.

Nonetheless, this is a remarkable chance to go, to just simply move on and stop the hand-wringing.

But don't bother to come back. The same worries will just spook you out again.

Equities, contrary to what you might think, are not for everyone, particularly those who cannot hear the media without panicking.

That's who should sell.

And let those who have the intermediate outlook go make the money.

At the time of publication, Cramer was long Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Caterpillar, Fannie Mae, Sears, Corning, Hewlett-Packard and Fannie Mae.

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Three Reasons the Market Marches to Oil's Beat

Originally published on July 5 at 1:45 p.m. EDT

It's amazing how important these oils are to the overall market. You lose them, you don't have enough leadership away from them to sustain a rally. And as much as you would like to see Apple(AAPL Quote) and Google(GOOG Quote) and Research In Motion(RIMM Quote) turn things around, that's too much heavy lifting.

How the market came to march to the tune of oil and oil infrastructure is rather amazing. I ascribe it to a few factors:

1. The mutual funds that are overweighted in the oil complex -- Conoco(COP Quote), Chevron(CVX Quote), Exxon(XOM Quote), Schlumberger(SLB Quote), Transocean(RIG Quote) -- are just on fire and they are getting a ton of money in.

2. There is no overhead resistance in these stocks. I know lately there has been some question about the overall worth of buybacks, but I think that in this particular case a lot of shares that were in weak hands have been put away. Now you have lots of long-term holders who believe in the secular energy story of the price going up a little bit each year and the oil in the ground getting harder to find.

3. This one looms large: I know of no group that will have as good a set of earnings as the cohort that includes Exxon, Conoco, Marathon(MRO Quote), Sunoco(SUN Quote) and Valero(VLO Quote), except maybe the group of Baker Hughes(BHI Quote), Schlumberger, Core Labs(CLB Quote), Transocean and GlobalSantaFe(GSF Quote).

With earnings coming up, hedge funds will gravitate to what works and what won't surprise us. Suffice it to say that an Occidental(OXY Quote) or a Devon(DVN Quote) won't disappoint.

Without this group leading, though, we just can't get anything big going. I see aerospace trying, and so is ag. And so is infrastructure, when McDermott(MDR Quote) and Foster Wheeler(FWLT Quote) are right back at 'em!

But it isn't enough. When this group goes down, you have the potential to get routed if the bonds don't cooperate.

That's how it feels today after a swell little run.

At the time of publication, Cramer was long Transocean.

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A Dozen Tech Stocks to Like This Summer

Originally published on July 6 at 9:15 a.m. EDT

So going into the summer, when tech bottoms, what should you buy? And is it worth it? Could you get hit by a Parametric(PMTC Quote), with its vicious guidedown last night? Is it simply worth it to wait and see what the quarters bring -- particularly because there will be moments, like today, when a spike in bond yields affects this group and brings it down in price?

I think that if you do a combination of the companies that have already reported and the companies that have good things going on for them, you won't get hurt. The combination won't immunize you from Fed worries/inflation/the 10-year collapse, but it will immunize you from the more important risk: negative preannouncements.

Here's a list of what I think works right now:

1. Apple(AAPL Quote) is going higher as the iPhone picks up distributors worldwide. I hope it goes with good providers. The Achilles heel here is exclusives with second-tier providers like Telefonica.

2. EMC(EMC Quote) is doing a restructuring that is bringing out value plus creating an accelerated growth scenario for 2008 numbers. Could work to $22.

3. Oracle(ORCL Quote) reported a great number and has gotten its mojo back, while SAP(SAP Quote) has fallen apart. Could return to its old greatness.

4. Texas Instruments(TXN Quote) has expectations that I don't fear. Would love a pullback to $37 but the buyback is voracious and 16% growth with a 21 multiple is too cheap.

5. Ciena(CIEN Quote): This one looks to be the winner in the aggressive Verizon(VZ Quote) buildout. Its parts are vital to the triple play.

6. Google(GOOG Quote) is still cheap and still benefiting from the Yahoo!(YHOO Quote) implosion. YouTube was genius; it couldn't stop growing if it wanted to.

7. Level 3(LVLT Quote) is a play on the developing bandwidth shortage; look for pricing to turn up.

8. Corning: See Level 3 above. This stock seems stalled at $25 ... for now.

9. Nvidia(NVDA Quote) is the semi to own, not Intel(INTC Quote) or AMD(AMD Quote), because high-speed graphic chips have intense demand.

10. Garmin(GRMN Quote) is a GPS device company that is barely tech but selling like hotcakes.

11. Omniture(OMTR Quote) is vital to the Web rally and it's not quitting.

12. F5 Networks: See Omniture above.

All of these have gotten the jump on the summer. I am not saying that Intel, Dell(DELL Quote), Microsoft(MSFT Quote) and Cisco(CSCO Quote) are bad here, to name three others that historically have done well. I just think they won't be up as much as these others might be.

Which is why I present the list of 12.

At the time of publication, Cramer was long Yahoo!.