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:
- tech stocks;
- a terrible IPO; and
- natural gas.
for information on
RealMoney.com
, where you can see all the blogs, including Jim Cramer's -- and reader comments -- in real time.
Tech Stocks Face Real Trouble
Originally published on April 8 at 6:49 a.m. EDT
When people say "tech" on TV, it is almost always followed with "cheap," or "low valuation." To which I say, "So what?"
AMD
(AMD) - Get Report
looked cheap until last night.
Motorola
( MOT) looked cheap and there turned out to be no there there.
Cisco
(CSCO) - Get Report
looks cheap but all I hear are earnings cuts.
Dell
(DELL) - Get Report
looks cheap, but who cares?
Lots of cheap out there.
Here's my question: Where's the catalyst?
Shorts? Stronger growth in the second half? No, the only catalysts I look for in tech are product cycles, and other than
Salesforce.com
(CRM) - Get Report
(nice move there),
Research In Motion
( RIMM) and
maybe
Apple
(AAPL) - Get Report
, because we need a new phone there already, there are no new product cycles to speak of.
Layer on the fact that RIMM has a product cycle and had a great quarter and is below where it traded at its high after the quarter -- can you imagine where that would be if the market were to turn down? -- and you can see that tech may be cheap for nobody knows how long.
When that happens, you get a chain reaction when the market turns bad. Suddenly you have
Microsoft
(MSFT) - Get Report
thinking about overpaying, at least that will be the scuttlebutt. You have
Hewlett-Packard
(HPQ) - Get Report
going down because AMD says things are weaker. You have
Intel
(INTC) - Get Report
going down because AMD's not going bankrupt. You have
Freescale
on the cover of
Business Week
making it clear that there won't be any deals from this sector any time soon. Next you will have
(GOOG) - Get Report
head down on a slowing ad story from some other company.
That's what happens when you are in it only for valuation and there aren't any product cycles to stem the tide.
I have heard tech praised endlessly this year, and yet it has done nothing. I think it is about to do less than nothing right now. I think it is going down.
Sure,
IBM
(IBM) - Get Report
will keep hyping its stock, and I don't think HPQ is doing badly. How low can
Texas Instruments
(TXN) - Get Report
go? It is so long-term cheap.
Nokia's
(NOK) - Get Report
having a decent quarter.
EMC's
(EMC)
quarter is OK, but it does have
VMware
(VMW) - Get Report
, which, unfortunately, is not doing that well despite the hype.
But they can't exist in a vacuum. There's not enough here to warrant further rallying.
I want to be careful of this group. The negative pin action could be swift and there is no great secular trend, like food shortage or oil or ethanol or Chinese building to keep things rolling along.
Random musings
: If Kerry Killinger stays on when TPG does the recap of
Washington Mutual
(WM) - Get Report
, I would short the stock.
At the time of publication, Cramer was long EMC.
Why Can't Anyone Say 'No' to a Terrible IPO?
Originally published on April 9 at 9:04 a.m. EDT
These big pools of capital never stop with their hubris. Here we are, choking on so many ill-fated deals brought about by so many private-equity firms, and what happens?
Apollo Management
files for an IPO.
Only on Wall Street does no one say, "Wait, that's just ridiculous, you can't do that now. You can't. It is absurd. You are so a part of the problem. You are part of what went wrong. You simply can't do this now."
Of course, they missed the window that
Blackstone
(BX) - Get Report
and
Fortress Group
crawled through, where there were great gains on the IPO and then ever since, like a dot-com, it has been nothing but pain.
But that doesn't mean they can't force the window open. They can say, as they do, "What a great opportunity for YOU!" And the brokers will go with it because Apollo is a giant fee generator. So they won't say no. No one can say, "We just don't need this now," even though we just don't need this now, because Wall Street is about fees, not justice.
No matter. It will get done. Then
KKR
will do it right behind them. More merchandise we don't need right now. Maybe the brokers will go to all of the accounts that got
Visa
(V) - Get Report
and say, "You need to take this down." That would be par for the course.
This is a miserable time for everyone in the market, but the private-equity funds bear no part of the responsibility. I am waiting for
Rescap
, the horrid home equity and auto lender, to come to the market, in part because
Cerberus
wields so much power that they, too, could force something this ridiculous.
We are an embarrassment. We tolerate anything. This kind of thing, this Apollo deal, reminds us, right in our faces, that the Street is for hire without morals, prostitutes for cash.
Random musings
: I think
Nektar
(NKTR) - Get Report
is worth zero after this bad news about the inhaler.
At the time of publication, Cramer had no positions in the stocks mentioned.
Nat Gas Can Seemingly Do No Wrong
Originally published on April 9 at 11:20 a.m. EDT
When you can raise earnings estimates simply by finding natural gas, you are going to be able to get your stock higher.
That's what I was reminded of when I listened to Steve Farris, president, CEO and COO of
Apache
(APA) - Get Report
last night on "Mad Money." The British Columbia find that he announced yesterday is the biggest out there (with the exception of the Barnett Shale), and what it says is, "Switch to natural gas everyone, we are in control of our destiny because of natural gas."
He went on to make clear that drilling costs are low enough that the BC find can be hugely profitable. That's the signal to raise numbers. He also made the point that natural gas would have to plummet big to make it so the find was uneconomic. Another chance to raise numbers.
You also can raise numbers for this quarter after the remarkable drawdown we saw this morning in oil, which is more than twice as expensive as natural gas right now. That arbitrage has to close soon, and as oil goes higher, it means nat gas will
have
to go higher.
Some companies right now are totally in control of their own destiny. The ones that are most in control are the nat gas companies that keep finding and finding and making more money.
One day, an administration will realize that the Food for Oil campaign for ethanol is a disaster, and natural gas will be the future of choice. When that happens, the numbers will go higher still.
No group has that kind of power.
It is the best place to be.
I just wish there would be a pullback. There has to be eventually.
Just has to be.
At the time of publication, Cramer had no positions in the stocks mentioned.
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
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