Cramer Parodies the Roundtable

HIAM LONG: Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy, chief cook and bottle-washer, everything in the woolly and wild overseas market is foreign to, and escapes the ken of Hiam Long. The retreaded--but not retired--Brooklyn-born ex-tire and bank analyst, now hangs his shingle from our offices, and coins his money at the Long-Term Underperformance Fund. Never uncannily insightful, always equivocal, Long calls żem as he doesn't see żem, which , invariably is wrong. But he's proud of it and we welcome him back for his tenth roundtable appearance.

Barron's: It's prognostication time again, panelists, and we're going to give you another chance to get it right. Whither the economy, Hiam?

LONG: Last year I called for a brutal recession and higher inflation, GDP growth between 1 and 6 percent and a stock market that could go lower before it goes higher. I can see the same thing happening again this year. There hasn't been a big build up in inventories, the consumer is relatively liquid, yet bankruptcies are on the rise and the Goldman Sachs commodities index is hitting record highs. Heck, it outperformed all other indices last year. The government lies through its teeth, we're going to hell in a handbasket with this deficit of ours, so I guess you should just put all of your money on Double Zero and roll the dice.

Barron's: This brings us to the point in the Roundtable where we can really cost our readers some dough. Hiam, you had nary a win last year, what are you buying?

LONG: Stocks that begin with the letter P. Can I read them all to you. (Stocks not printed for reasons of space)

Michael Price: Those are your longs?

Barron's: Mike, let's stay collegial and uncritical, please. Hiam, didn't you recommend some of those stocks last year? How did they do?

LONG: Actually, I've used the same list for seven years. They haven't done anything, in fact they are all down a tad, but they're all about to break out so I will keep flogging them.

Barron's Anything overseas interest you?

LONG: Why of course, I like the breweries of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, particularly Stalin's Wicked Ale, the supermarkets of Malagasy, such as Bi-hi, and the banks of Antarctica, particularly the sandier ones. I'm finding terrific buys in North Korea--management, management, management--and I like the action in Wake Island, Easter Island, Christmas Island, and the Galapagos Islands, although the latter is a bit too small for most of our readers.

Barron's: Anything to buy domestically Hiam?

LONG: The small cap market's been in its own liquidity- driven- secular- bear- cyclical- bull- cycle with both long and short term p/e expansion and contraction, so I'm taking advantage and cherry picking some of the best names, many of which I expect to get huge takeover bids in the next few weeks, including Amalgamated Anchor, North American Ballast, and Western Dreck, all of which sell for $4 or less.

Barron's: And how long do you expect to hold them for?

LONG: Until 9:40 a.m. tomorrow morning. I also like Millennium.

Barron's: The chemical company?

LONG: No, the TV show.

Barron's : Anything to go short here?

LONG: Well a few years back one of the panelists urged selling short Coke, probably well, 100 points ago, and another urged us to short Intel and all of its derivatives, when the semiconductor maker was at $25, because we couldn't possibly absorb all of those PCs. I think those two calls are right on the money, and with my clients' funds I continue to short them every ten points up. Something's got to give and I'll be there saying I told you so to the stupid public when these things blow up. It's better to be wrong and sorry than it is to be right and rich.

Barron's: Spoken like a true member of the Roundtable. Thanks, Hiam. Jimmy, anything to add?

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