TheStreet.com TV Recap: Thoughts on Riding Out This Market

The idea is to keep people in the game for the long term, but short-term market players are going to lose a lot of money, Jim Cramer said on TheStreet.com TV's Wall Street Confidential Web video Thursday.

Cramer said he doesn't want to pretend that is not going to happen. He himself is trying to run a diversified portfolio for his charitable trust, Action Alerts PLUS, and is "getting killed" as well.

"Almost everyone is getting killed," he said. "So I'd rather not even go out there and say Procter & Gamble (PG Quote) is good. I've said that. I've staked out positions."

Instead, he wants people to understand "why it's so cataclysmic out there, so at least they have the grounding to say, 'OK, I'm willing to ride this out.' "

There are columnists on RealMoney.com, such as Cramer's friends Robert Marcin and Doug Kass, who are recommending that people should just own nothing.

However, Cramer's experience has been that most investors are in it for more than just the present time, and they are not just hedge fund managers, Cramer said. "What I'm trying to do is focus on what can work and what will really be hurt, not what's working, because nothing's working," he said.

"My experience in the 1990 bull market, which I'm using because that's the last time we had a credit crunch, is that you lost money in everything, except for maybe 20 stocks," Cramer continued. "There are thousands of stocks, so to focus on the bull market and the 20 stocks, which has been my style both in the videos and on my TV show, does not give the long shrift, does not give enough to explaining why everything else is going down."

Cramer said he can say Procter and PepsiCo (PEP Quote) are good. and that Pfizer (PFE Quote) is "getting interesting."

He can certainly say that Schering-Plough (SGP Quote) has made investors money, and that he is convinced Kellogg (K Quote) and General Mills (GIS Quote) are gaining share, and that Altria (MO Quote), which he owns for Action Alerts PLUS, "with a meeting coming up makes a lot of sense."

Furthermore, Cramer has emphasized CVS Caremark (CVS Quote), MedcoHealth (MHS Quote) and Cardinal Health (CAH Quote).

But at the end of the day, when he looks at his computer screen of green vs. red stocks, the ratio, Cramer said, is "probably 10 to 1 red." Therefore, he wants to shoot videos that keep this in mind and "recognize that as the Federal Reserve continues to do a de facto tightening, you're going to continue to have spillover."