Jim Cramer's Best Blogs
NEW YORK (
) -- 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 positive nature of recent market moves;
- Chipotle Mexican Grill's zesty upside; and
- why many observers are misinterpreting this week's housing starts report.
for information on
RealMoney
, where you can see all the blogs, including Jim Cramer's -- and reader comments -- in real time.
These Positive Market Moves Are Real
Posted at 4:13 p.m. EST, Friday, Dec. 17
Someone will have a takeaway today that says, "The action wasn't as bullish as the news, so sell it." Others will say, "See, the market's tired, look at the reaction to the
AT&T
(T) - Get Report
news about the dividend boost and the buyback." Others still will say, "The market has hit the wall and can't power any higher."
I don't know. We're up more than 11% this year, the
Nasdaq
much more, and if anything, we should be surprised that some stocks like
Oracle
(ORCL) - Get Report
can still go higher
after
they have run, something I expect to see from
Jabil Circuit
(JBL) - Get Report
next week, by the way.
I like the way
Research In Motion
(RIMM)
acts. The market is smart about it, taking its cue from what Anton Wahlman wrote earlier on this site about how international does matter. And I like how yesterday
Nucor
(NUE) - Get Report
,
General Mills
(GIS) - Get Report
and
Federal Express
(FDX) - Get Report
rallied when people figured out the good future and stopped focusing on the negative past.
Let me be blunt: I think people forget what a bull market looks like, a market like the mid-1980s, where we had substantial price appreciation, or the mid-1990s, where market capitalizations grew and grew. They seem to only remember 2000-2003 or 2008-2009.
These latter two periods are not the right paradigms, but they are imprinted on the brains of many.
They aren't working.
So people miss Oracle or
Juniper Networks
(JNPR) - Get Report
or
Ciena
(CIEN) - Get Report
. They don't trust
Caterpillar
(CAT) - Get Report
and
Deere
(DE) - Get Report
. They can't believe in
Chipotle Mexican Grill
(CMG) - Get Report
or
F5 Networks
(FFIV) - Get Report
because they "can't really be up that much."
Yes they can.
The negative prism is failing people. But it is endlessly adopted and never modified.
My advice: It is never too late to change. Things are good, not bad. Don't play irony. Don't be too skeptical. Be opportunistic.
Because 2011 is going to be more of the same.
At the time of publication, Cramer was long ORCL.
Chipotle Deserves Its Spicy Multiple
Posted at 2:03 p.m. EST, Thursday, Dec. 16
Nice to see hypergrowth catching a bid despite the rise in interest rates. Nothing totally crazy to the upside, but remember these stocks --
F5
(FFIV) - Get Report
,
Apple
(AAPL) - Get Report
,
Deckers
(DECK) - Get Report
,
Salesforce.com
(CRM) - Get Report
,
Chipotle
(CMG) - Get Report
,
Amazon
(AMZN) - Get Report
and
Netflix
(NFLX) - Get Report
-- are classic canaries in a coal mine, going down much harder than the rest of the market and then rallying much harder ... and we have had a couple of disappointing days in these names.
The one that's attracting the most attention today is Chipotle, thanks to its buy recommendation from Goldman Sachs as part of a larger restaurant research rollout (where
Starbucks
(SBUX) - Get Report
is the best idea).
I have to tell you I love this kind of research. Goldman highlights that Chipotle is early in the U.S. expansion and the estimates are way too low, including for same-store sales. Plus the report highlights the company's very special brand equity.
Why is this research so great? Because most of the other analysts who cover the stock look at it only as something that has moved too far too fast and can't possibly be worth its current $7 billion market cap. Goldman looks at the company out a couple of years and notes that its valuation is in line with other high-growth peers. The firm also thinks Chipotle has the best shot to outrace the commodity costs given its "outsized" same-store sales numbers.
I like these FADS CAN stocks. Chipotle's been uncharacteristically stalled here. I think it's just consolidating, and this report could be the catalyst to send it back to its old highs.
It totally deserves to be a member of this exclusive highest-growth club.
Random musings
: That
Celgene
(CELG) - Get Report
selloff was much ado about nothing. Incredible how the headlines off the revlimid news were so damning and the actual stories were much better. Hope you didn't sell into the hysteria. Still a buy.
At the time of publication, Cramer was long Apple.
Bad Data in Housing
Posted at 9:04 a.m. EST, Thursday, Dec. 16
We got our first really bad number today: housing starts. Why? Because they rose more than expected to 550,000, which is a 3.9% increase from last month.
You want housing to start rallying in price? Build fewer than 350,000 homes, thought to be the natural replacement number from fire, flood and just plain wear and tear. My hope for a housing shortage in 2012 is all about building no new homes, but these companies seem like they can't help themselves.
It's the same way with the tax credit, which I think was terrible for housing as an important cohort in the country because it also caused the builders to put up more homes and it made it so none of them went bankrupt. They are so powerful in Washington that it was hopeless to think they wouldn't get their way.
I am adamant that home prices are done going down. We have household growth in this country that has been well below average. We have growth in families. We have a stabilization of job losses, with this number this morning fitting the bill.
We just can't get that many new homes, because the homes coming out of foreclosure are much more than we need right now.
Other than Zillow with its headline-catching predictions for a sharp fall in housing -- a splash that I would create, too, if I worked at a company that was about to go public -- I don't see people looking for dire forecasts. I am looking for higher prices, though, not just stabilization. Too many months of new housing starts like this one and I will lower my outlook to continued bumping along the bottom -- not a retreat, but just a low level of price, in keeping with what we had last year at this time.
Bad number.
Unexpected. Bulls should stop cheering about it. We needed a plummet, and we didn't get it.
Random musings
:
FedEx's
(FDX) - Get Report
earnings have more to do with labor and costs than shipping, which is on fire...
At the time of publication, Cramer had no positions in the stocks mentioned.
Jim Cramer, founder and chairman of TheStreet.com, writes daily market commentary for TheStreet.com's RealMoney and runs the charitable trust portfolio,
. He also participates in video segments on TheStreet.com TV and serves as host of CNBC's "Mad Money" television program.
Mr. Cramer graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College, where he was president of The Harvard Crimson. He worked as a journalist at the Tallahassee Democrat and the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, covering everything from sports to homicide before moving to New York to help start American Lawyer magazine. After a three-year stint, Mr. Cramer entered Harvard Law School and received his J.D. in 1984. Instead of practicing law, however, he joined Goldman Sachs, where he worked in sales and trading. In 1987, he left Goldman to start his own hedge fund. While he worked at his fund, Mr. Cramer helped start Smart Money for Dow Jones and then, in 1996, he founded TheStreet.com, of which he is chairman and where he has served as a columnist and contributor since. In 2000, Mr. Cramer retired from active money management to embrace media full time, including radio and television.
Mr. Cramer is the author of "
Confessions of a Street Addict
," "You Got Screwed," "Jim Cramer's Real Money," "Jim Cramer's Mad Money," "Jim Cramer's Stay Mad for Life" and, most recently, "Jim Cramer's Getting Back to Even." He has written for Time magazine and New York magazine and has been featured on CBS' 60 Minutes, NBC's Nightly News with Brian Williams, Meet the Press, Today, The Tonight Show, Late Night and MSNBC's Morning Joe.