Jim Cramer's Best Blogs

Aerospace gets peculiar: Boeing (BA Quote) may have peaked at $107, but it began its run from $52. I don't think that Boeing's created nothing; in fact, it has created a whole new aircraft with great orders. But it's shut down by a strike, so why not short it down to there? Honeywell (HON Quote) began this move at $38, so not much downside, but still decent. United Tech (UTX Quote) started at $49; again, lots of room down. GE (GE Quote)? Bad short -- began at $27. Total round trip.

About the only area that has nothing really to fall from is tech: Intel (INTC Quote), $20; Microsoft (MSFT Quote), $25; Cisco (CSCO Quote), $18. Only Oracle (ORCL Quote) from $12 and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ Quote) from $21 seem vulnerable through this thesis, and H-P's been transformed and underearning. I guess I would short Oracle until the cows came home. Tech didn't blossom with the emerging market romp, so it probably won't sink with it. IBM (IBM Quote), by this nature, seems interesting -- it has transformed itself from hardware to software, and yet it started at $88. I know a lot of people want to short it, though, as a shortfall candidate. EMC (EMC Quote), by the way, is unchanged, despite the creation of VMware (VMW Quote), but lately that's looking pretty worthless, still a counterintuitive short. Nokia (NOK Quote) has 4 more points to fall by this methodology.

To me, this exercise is enlightening. While the prices we have seen in many of these stocks have plummeted with China and the forced selling of hedge funds, if I were an inveterate bear and I believed that nothing was created -- and the only thing most of these companies have done is buy back stock at what now are clearly stupid and ridiculous prices -- I would lay these out on any bounce. The fertilizer companies just seem like naturals, and I would actually recommend their shorting right here.