Jim Cramer's Portfolios of the Week
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WINDERMERE, Fla. (
) -- According to Jim Cramer, there were any number of reasons why the markets rallied
from a 92-point deficit on Wednesday morning
. He said the factors that helped to boost stock prices included positive comments from
BHP Billiton
(BHP) - Get Report
that demand from China is still strong. Those comments were also reaffirmed by
ArcelorMittal
(MT) - Get Report
, which also said demand from China is still healthy.
Cramer thinks another reason the markets went higher was President Obama's continued hiatus from attacking Wall Street and bankers. He said as long as we have no news from the White House, it's good news for equities.
Another positive for the markets was
Federal Reserve
Chairman Ben Bernanke's testimony before Congress, where he assured Wall Street that the Fed won't raise rates until the economy starts to recover. Cramer said Bernanke is doing the right thing when it comes to what Wall Street needs to have a recovery.
"All of these positives may be the beginning of something big," Cramer said, "but even if they're not, they're still welcome news for investors."
Recently, Cramer found opportunity in big oil stocks, private label stocks and dividend-boosting stocks. Here are some Cramer highlights from over the past week as aggregated from his "Mad Money" TV show, the "Stop Trading!" segment on
CNBC
and his
RealMoney
blog posts (these blog post require a
RealMoney
subscription).
Cramer's Big Value Big Oil Stocks
: Cramer thinks the big oil stocks offer big value right now. In a
, he wrote: "I am obsessed with it, because the biggest values in the market are in oil here. Not in tech, as they were just 10 days ago." The
Cramer's Big Value Big Oil Stocks
portfolio includes
Weatherford
(WFT) - Get Report
and
Marathon
(MRO) - Get Report
.
Cramer's Dividend-Boosting Stocks
: All week long, Cramer has been focusing on dividend-boosting companies that are screaming to the markets that "business is great!" On
Wednesday's "Mad Money" episode,
he told viewers that while
Core Labs
(CLB) - Get Report
currently yields 0.3%, what's impressive is that the company boosted its dividend 20% last month from 10 cents to 12 cents. The
Cramer's Dividend-Boosting Stocks
portfolio includes
Hasbro
(HAS) - Get Report
and
Ross Stores
(ROST) - Get Report
.
Cramer's Short-Squeeze Bank Stocks
: Are some of the bank stocks being short squeezed? In a
he wrote: "This trade's been a great one, one that I would have done by rote at my old hedge fund, just part of a vast and obvious playbook that a monkey could exercise." The
Cramer's Short-Squeeze Bank Stocks
portfolio includes
Bank of America
(BAC) - Get Report
and
Zions Bancorp
(ZION) - Get Report
.
Cramer's Companies Stronger Than the Countries
: Cramer thinks that a number of companies are much stronger than the small counties with debt problems such as Greece. In a
he wrote: "I will take the common stock of
Kinder Morgan Energy Partners
(KMP)
or
Enterprise Products Partners
(EPD) - Get Report
over the paper of Greece or Portugal any day of the week." The
Cramer's Companies Stronger Than the Countries
portfolio includes
AT&T
(T) - Get Report
and
United Parcel Service
(UPS) - Get Report
.
Cramer's Private-Labels-Are-King Stocks
: Cramer believes that private labels are king in a down economy. In a
he wrote: "Trade down. Generic. Just another reminder about how difficult this market is to navigate after the Great Recession." The
Cramer's Private-Labels-Are-King Stocks
portfolio includes
TreeHouse Foods
(THS) - Get Report
and
Costco Wholesale
(COST) - Get Report
.
: Cramer thinks the market's sleeper stocks can be found on the
Philadelphia Semiconductor Index
. On
he said this is one of the few groups that can do well regardless of any big-picture economic problems. The
portfolio includes
Intel
(INTC) - Get Report
and
Marvel Technology Group
(MRVL) - Get Report
.
-- Written by Roberto Pedone in Windermere, Fla.
(Editor's note: At the time of publication, Cramer owned Intel, Costco, UPS, Bank of America, Marathon and Weatherford for his Action Alerts PLUS charitable trust.)
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Roberto Pedone, based out of Windermere, Fla., is an independent trader who focuses on stocks, options, futures, commodities and currencies. He is also an outside contributor to Beconequity.com and maintains the website Maddmoney.net, which he sold to Blue Wave Advisors in 2008. Roberto studied International Business at The Milwaukee School of Engineering, and he spent a year overseas studying business in Lubeck, Germany.