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 he blogged on:

• a gain in oil's loss,
• the perils of careless chatter, and
• a trade in tech.

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Oil's Loss Is Consumer Plays' Gain
Posted at 2:16 p.m. EDT, July 7, 2009

Sure the consumer is weak. No kidding. Tell me something -- in the immortal words of Chris Matthews and our own Doug Kass -- I don't know.

But how about this -- what happens if oil goes to where it was before the big manipulation? What if it goes to $45?

That means you can make a lot more money on the oil-user side: retail like Kohls(KSS Quote), J.C. Penney's(JCP Quote) and Macy's(M Quote); restaurants like Brinker(EAT Quote) and Darden(DRI Quote); apparel like Jones(JNY Quote), VF Corp. and Nike(NKE Quote); as well as anything that goes into Best Buy(BBY Quote).

You also get some terrific pin action in anything that needs to be delivered -- all packaged goods -- and anything that uses plastic: Procter & Gamble(PG Quote), Colgate(CL Quote) (already on the move) and, of course, Pepsi(PEP Quote), which reports this week. Kellogg's(K Quote) fuel costs exceed its grain costs per box of cereal.

Of course, the problem is you feel the decline in oil first as Exxon Mobil(XOM Quote), Chevron(CVX Quote), ConocoPhillips(COP Quote) and BP(BP Quote) are now hugely weighted in the market. And we don't know if $45 is right. We just know that that's the level the oil stocks are signaling.

You want the pure play? Take a look at Cracker Barrel(CBRL Quote): killed with higher oil prices as it is levered more to gasoline than just about any consumer play. It's bought back a lot of stock and its labor and food costs are going lower.

Pure play. Not exciting, though, like trading Occidental Petroleum(OXY Quote) or National Oilwell Varco(NOV Quote). But it will most likely be more lucrative.

At the time of publication, Cramer was long VF Corp., Pepsi, BP and Chevron.