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:
- the Yahoo!/Microsoft deal,
- wind power, and
- our foolish energy policy.
for information on
RealMoney.com
, where you can see all the blogs, including Jim Cramer's -- and reader comments -- in real time.
Two Guys Stalled the Yahoo! Deal
Originally published on Tuesday, May 6, at 6:43 a.m.
Two guys with less than 10% of the shares outstanding blocked this
Yahoo!
(YHOO)
deal -- Jerry Yang and David Filo. I understand this logic. They are founders. They probably hate
Microsoft
(MSFT) - Get Report
. They feel tremendous pride. They think that surrendering to Microsoft would be like giving in to the Evil Empire.
But if they felt that, they should never have brought the company public. Once you are public you are for sale, either in pieces or all together, unless you have one of those travesty two-classes-of-stock configurations that I think shouldn't even be allowed and have almost always been disappointing.
So what happens? I think the stock acted very well yesterday. It should have been down more. I think what happened is that arbs looked at the holders and realized that if they bought up enough stock that was for sale they could force a sale or a new board of directors. Might take a year, but if you can buy something at $24 and sell it at $34 a year from now, well, let's just say that is a big win.
This is an entrenched management situation. They think they own the company. They don't. They have less than 10%. A couple of aggressive guys, including people who know the game, like Carl Icahn, will have Filo and Yang out on their butts next year at this time.
Which is why the stock didn't go to $22 and probably won't go much lower.
Two guys with 10% can hold off the cavalry, but they can't stop it.
At the time of publication, Cramer had no positions in stocks mentioned.
These Stocks Know Which Way the Wind Blows
Originally published on Wednesday, May 7, at 4:30 p.m.
Wind. It's a real theme. You
read me earlier on
Broadwind Energy
(BWEN) - Get Report
, where Tontine Partners bought a little more than 5 million shares recently. The stock is up huge on my
RealMoney
article, and I wish it would come in.
But then you go read the
Quanta
(PWR) - Get Report
call, and you know that it involves windmills among other utility issues. I recommended Quanta on my show at $27, and then it went promptly to $20 for
no reason whatsoever
. Drives me crazy. But now it is all the way back and then some, and they cite, among other things, wind power and wind installations.
And now a third one has surfaced today:
Owens Corning
(OC) - Get Report
. It isn't just an insulation play. Amazing. It is also a
windmill
play, I can't believe it. But Owens Corning's swing division seems, again, to be windmills.
Now, the purest play is Broadwind, for certain. But it has been sitting there doing nothing until I mentioned it, and there is no catalyst happening at the moment, except what we are hearing from
GE
(GE) - Get Report
(I work for GE),
Vestas
,
Trinity Industries
(TRN) - Get Report
, Quanta, Owens Corning and, one day, Broadwind.
Still, this theme has huge legs, and I think that on any cooldown these should be bought.And it looks like a cooldown in the whole market is occurring.
Wind, for real, is a great place to be. Never forget, it is
the cheapest
form of renewable energy
by far!
And the last I looked, oil seems go up every day.
Random musings:
The
Synchronoss Technologies
(SNCR) - Get Report
story couldn't be defeated by the
Apple
(AAPL) - Get Report
bulls. Frankly, I don't understand how so many iPhones could be activated without SNCR. Bit of a mystery that will most likely knock down Apple a couple of days. ... Apple and
MasterCard
(MA) - Get Report
are the leaders, so it was a natural to slam this market down. ...
Citigroup
(C) - Get Report
below print price! Ouch. This management team is just awful, I think.
At the time of publication, Cramer had no positions in stocks mentioned.
Our Stupid Energy Policy Is Killing Us
Originally published on Thursday, May 8, at 2:02 p.m.
We are a ridiculously unrealistic country when it comes to energy. First, the focus: Even after all of the things that
Tyson
(TSN) - Get Report
and
General Mills
(GIS) - Get Report
and
Heinz
(HNZ)
and
ConAgra
(CAG) - Get Report
have said about 30% of the corn being diverted to make 3% of the gasoline, the ethanol lobby remains supreme and no one in power is doing a thing.
Meanwhile, we make nothing but trouble for the real hopes to the issue: natural gas, nuclear, and now clean coal.
Nuclear is a local issue unless the government wants to build plants. It will never happen. Our country does not have the stomach for the fuel. I heard Obama trash it this weekend, and I knew we were goners, because he is spouting exactly what is needed to get elected. McCain's more comfortable with it, but he is in the same camp as all the nuke bulls -- "We should approve it faster." As if there is a "we" out there. There isn't. There is a big cost issue, no place to put the waste because we refuse simply to adopt the French vitreous solution, and we don't offer any guarantees to anyone to do it. DEAD, DEAD, DEAD.
Natural gas? Anyone who listened to the
Devon
(DVN) - Get Report
,
Apache
(APA) - Get Report
,
Anadarko
(APC) - Get Report
calls or the
El Paso
( EP) call this morning knows that natural gas is in plentiful supply, and we should be switching to encourage natural gas plants to be built right now and for clean autos to use natural gas. Nah, it's an out-of-favor fuel
still
viewed as being unreliable and now viewed as
expensive
, for heaven's sake. It is historically so much cheaper than oil, it is amazing.
Now it's coal that's an issue. The blip that caused
Foster Wheeler
(FWLT)
to go down yesterday was deeply linked to management saying that the clean coal plants that are on the agenda could be hurt by a holdup in coal environmental laws and municipal issues involving financings. This is really amazing. The last hope to the energy crisis is clean coal, and the best solution isn't even being built because the politicians can't agree on coal and because the muni market's been crushed by the credit crisis!
Sure, I believe that solar and wind can be big, and I reiterate that I think the world of
First Solar
(FSLR) - Get Report
and
Quanta
(PWR) - Get Report
, and
Trinity
(TRN) - Get Report
and
Otter Tail
(OTTR) - Get Report
and now
Broadwind
(BWEN) - Get Report
(coming down, getting ready to buy??) and
Owens Corning
(OC) - Get Report
.
But the bad news on clean coal, the lack of encouragement from the government for drilling and supporting natural gas (the coasts are full of the stuff) and the endless belief in the most unrealistic clean fuel imaginable -- corn-based ethanol (I believe in sugar-based) -- makes us a worldwide laughingstock. We have so much natural gas in the Rockies and Wyoming, but it is thwarted by environmentalists endlessly. I am a true environmentalist and have worked hard and given a lot of land to land preservation. Yet I cannot stomach the endless defenses of animal habitats that have to be suspended for now until we fix this situation. And ANWR? I have fought this one forever, but I now concede it can't be fought anymore. It has to be drilled. We have to get this stuff moving right now.
We are truly pathetic about energy. No help for clean coal, no support for natural gas. Nothing. We are our own worst enemy.
Random musings
:
Colfax
is new tech, that's the kind of stock I like, the new ipo CFX. ... I can't believe how good El Paso is. Much higher. Going much higher. ...
Wal-Mart
(WMT) - Get Report
remains a great holding until $60. ... I still think
Alcoa
(AA) - Get Report
will not be public this time next year (a long-standing prediction, though). ...
NYSE Euronext
(NYX)
had a great futures quarter and the
Financial Times
article should be read from this morning. ...
Level Three
(LVLT)
keeps sneaking up. That was the first good quarter. Sorry, but after that track record, I need another before I can get behind it. ...
BHP
(BHP) - Get Report
and
Freeport-McMoRan
(FCX) - Get Report
have been great tells of the action of late, as had been
US Steel
(X) - Get Report
and
Deere
(DE) - Get Report
. ...
Caterpillar's
(CAT) - Get Report
too low and can still be bought. ...
Altria
(MO) - Get Report
is finally breaking out of its stupid slump. No options pressure there yet for next week. I think clear run to $22.50.
Philip Morris International
(PM) - Get Report
is worth at least $55 on dollar alone!
At the time of publication, Cramer was long Altria, Foster Wheeler, Philip Morris International and El Paso.
Jim Cramer is a director and co-founder of TheStreet.com. He contributes daily market commentary for TheStreet.com's sites and serves as an adviser to the company's CEO. Outside contributing columnists for TheStreet.com and RealMoney.com, including Cramer, may, from time to time, write about stocks in which they have a position. In such cases, appropriate disclosure is made. To see his personal portfolio and find out what trades Cramer will make before he makes them, sign up for
Action Alerts PLUS. Watch Cramer on "Mad Money" weeknights on CNBC. To order Cramer's newest book -- "Jim Cramer's Stay Mad for Life: Get Rich, Stay Rich (Make Your Kids Even Richer),"
click here. Click
here to order "Mad Money: Watch TV, Get Rich," click
here to order "Real Money: Sane Investing in an Insane World," click
here to get "You Got Screwed!" and click
here for Cramer's autobiography, "Confessions of a Street Addict." While he cannot provide personalized investment advice or recommendations, he appreciates your feedback and invites you to send comments by
clicking here.
TheStreet.com has a revenue-sharing relationship with Amazon.com under which it receives a portion of the revenue from Amazon.com purchases by customers directed there from TheStreet.com.