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:

• retail's strength,
• the bears' tired arguments, and
• Whitacre at GM.

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

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You Can't Ignore Retail's Strength Anymore
Posted at 9:46 a.m. EST, Dec. 1, 2009

How many great retailing reports does it take to figure out that retail's pretty strong? Last night we had extraordinary numbers from Guess? (GES), a moderately priced retailer of fashion merchandise that should have been blown out of the water by the Great Recession. Instead sales were stellar (go to Breakout Stocks for more).

Last week we had amazing numbers from J. Crew (JCG), another mall-based mainstream retailer that reported excellent numbers, simply excellent. Today we got Staples (SPLS), another segment of retail, reporting much better numbers and a bullish outlook.

My sources indicate that Apple (AAPL) had an extraordinary weekend -- don't forget that Apple is a huge retailer. Best Buy (BBY) performed extremely well, in part because (as I said last night) appliances are very strong.

I know conventional wisdom says I am wrong, but I have strong reports from Macy's (M), Kohl's (KSS) and Costco (COST) that sales were good, and more important, profits were great, although we won't hear about the profits until much later.

Target's (TGT) questionable and Wal-Mart's (WMT) a black box.

But other than J.C. Penney (JCP) I did not hear of a single retailer having a BAD holiday season.

That matters.

If it were bad, I would write it. I am not inclined to say things are good when my sources tell me they weren't.

In fact, my biggest worry is that Amazon (AMZN) was so strong that it cut into bricks-and-mortar names. But if that's the biggest worry, we don't have much to fret about.

I wish it were reporting season for more than just J. Crew and Guess? -- it leaves us guessing about the others.

It will be awhile before we see the profits even as we hear about so-so sales.

I would be a buyer during the gap of no news.

In fact, I would be a buyer of the Gap (GPS)!

Random musings: Finally people are realizing that AIG (AIG) is like Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE). This has been one of the longest short squeezes in history. ... We need more of the Wal-Mart vs. Amazon nonsense to keep building the Amazon shorts.

At the time of publication, Cramer had no positions in the stocks mentioned.

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