'RealMoney' Radio Recap: All the Coffee in China
Chinese President Hu Jintao said he wants to be a regular at
Starbucks
(SBUX) - Get Report
, and the company expects China to be its biggest overseas market, Jim Cramer said on his
"RealMoney" radio show Wednesday.
Ever since the coffee chain said that China would be its primary growth market, the stock has gone higher. Cramer believes that there's more upside, thanks to overseas expansion, and that he likes the stock and its last earnings report.
Cut back to four years ago when
Yum! Brand's
(YUM) - Get Report
KFC said China would be its biggest market. Cramer pointed out that the stock went up.
American Standard Companies
( ASD) has been hurt by poor overseas sales, but it went higher after it turned those sales around, Cramer said.
And shares of
United Technologies
are higher because the company's overseas business is booming, he added.
The lesson: "Borders are for countries, not for companies," said Cramer.
"You can be patriotic all you want. But if you want to make money ... I need you to think globally," he said.
In news from the Middle East, Cramer said that Abu Dhabi has announced that it will spend $2.5 billion to build a petrochemical complex.
Fluor
(FLR) - Get Report
is a company that he believes will profit from this deal.
He also said that
ABB
(ABB) - Get Report
, which provides power and automation technology, will also win, and that similar contracts could go to
Foster Wheeler
(FWLT)
. Cramer owns both stocks for his
ActionAlerts PLUS charitable trust portfolio.
Cramer said that with oil prices so high, people are eyeing coal as a viable alternative energy source for everything from fuel to making paint, fertilizers and plastics.
Cramer said that the technology to make the different building blocks that are most often made with oil has been around since the Weimar Republic; and he believes that coal, which the U.S. has in abundant supply, will be used more frequently.
Cramer said that one way to play this trend is with
Sasol
(SSL) - Get Report
. China is already using this German company's method for making coal into petrol, he said.
He also likes
Eastman Chemical
(EMN) - Get Report
, a spinoff of
Eastman Kodak
( EK), because 23% of the company's production is tied to coal.
"The writing is on the wall," he said, referring to the fact that the coal boom will be fueled by the more environmentally friendly, low-sulfur coal. Cramer said that
Peabody Energy
(BTU) - Get Report
is the play on this trend because it has the market for low-sulfur coal mines.
Cramer also likes
KFx
(KFX)
and
Headwaters
(HW)
, which use fossil fuel to make power.
Cramer's Callers
A caller wanted to know if
Disney
(DIS) - Get Report
would be a good stock to buy now as a long-term play for her 10-year-old child.
Cramer said that it has been hard to make a call on the company because the former chief executive had been "divisive." But now that Bob Iger is at the helm, Cramer said he is willing to bless a buy "now that
Disney has good management."
The brand is great, but don't expect great returns overnight, he said. This is a stock that Cramer believes makes sense for the long term.
A caller said that based on Cramer's articles on
TheStreet.com
and his comments on
CNBC
, his position on
UnitedHealth Group
(UNH) - Get Report
is unclear.
Cramer began by saying that owns the stock for
ActionAlerts PLUS. He added that he could be the only person left who is bullish on the stock.
He added that he didn't say that the stock would go to $60, but that he believes that it's fairly valued at $60.
"I'm losing a huge amount of money out there" for UnitedHealth, he said. But Cramer is not backing away.
He told another caller who bought
Motorola
( MOT) at $21 to get out of the stock. The shares went up a few points after the caller bought them, and then were beaten up after the company missed earnings. They were just above $22 at the time of the call.
Even though Cramer said there could be a brief bounce in the near term, he said there are several good reasons to swap out of the company.
First of all, "the Razr has overstayed its welcome," he said. And the company's systems business, which makes large-scale infrastructure for phone companies, is doing poorly.
Finally, Motorola is losing market share to
Nokia
(NOK) - Get Report
and
Samsung
.
Cramer said that he would stick with
Vivendi Universal
(V) - Get Report
. The stock has a 3.5% yield and he called it the "best-run entertainment company in the world."
Cramer likes it more than he does
Sony
(SNE) - Get Report
,
Disney
or
CBS
(CBS) - Get Report
.
A caller wanted to know if now would be a good time to get out of
GameStop
(GME) - Get Report
because the stock has doubled since last year.
Cramer said that he would not sell the stock outright because new game consoles will keep consumers coming back for more games. He called it a "multiyear story" and said that he would not back away.
Cramer said that he would not buy
American Oriental Bioengineering
( AOB) because he doesn't like to buy shares in Chinese companies, even though he believes the country is the single greatest growth market.
In the end, he said that people shouldn't invest in a company unless it has quality financials. Because there's no Chinese version of the
Securities and Exchange Commission
and no well-enforced accounting oversight, it's impossible to know the true financial health of a Chinese company.
However, Cramer likes U.S. companies that do business in China, so in the soybean space he recommended
Bunge
(BG) - Get Report
and
Monsanto
(MON)
.
He also likes
Syngenta
(SYT)
, which he called the European version of Monsanto.
There's one number to keep your eye on, Cramer said, and it's 5%. This is where the
Federal Reserve
is widely expected to take short-term interest rates when it meets next week, and it will be the rate of return that consumers get just for holding cash.
When people decide what stocks to buy, they will start to factor in the fact that they can get a 5% return for just holding cash, and not have to deal with any risks.
This will inevitably make investments less attractive, but the Fed has its reasons for making this move, he said. Cramer said that the central bank uses the "Goldilocks test" to decide where to take rates.
If the economy looks too hot, it raises rates to slow economic growth and keep inflation in check. If the economy gets too cold go down, rates go down. When the Fed believes the economy is just right, rates stay the same.
The Fed has made noise to the effect that it may finish raising rates soon, but then the consumer price index was released. Cramer said that this latest reading on the health of the economy "flunks the Goldilocks test" because it was so strong that there was speculation that it could portend inflation.
Rates have to go up when you have a number as strong as this consumer price number is, he said, adding that he believes rates could go as high as 5.25%.
In 2000 and 2001, the market went down badly because people correctly estimated that the Fed would keep raising rates, Cramer warned. If you ran a diversified portfolio, then you weren't really hurt by this, he said.
This is one reason why Cramer said he will be "pounding the table on diversification" in the weeks ahead.
He said that a little homework makes it possible to still make money in this environment, and that it can turn up some surprising finds as well.
When rates go higher, the assumption is that homebuilders will falter because mortgage rates rise and slow the housing market. But
D.R. Horton
(DHI) - Get Report
reported good results.
Cramer said that homework would show that immigration has helped the company by providing a stream of people who want housing.
Hiring also tends to slow when rates rise, but temporary hiring company
Manpower
(MAN) - Get Report
is doing well. That's because the company has expanded its business to France and Germany.
Finally, retail banking often slows when interest rates rise. But
Wells Fargo
(WFC) - Get Report
is doing well, Cramer said.
This is because the bank has recently seen double-digit growth in its debit card, credit and small loan markets.
Without doing some homework, he said that investors will miss out on opportunities to buy companies that have the ability to defy the logic of rising interest rates.
Want more Cramer? Check out Jim's rules and commandments for investing from his latest book by
.
At the time of publication, Cramer was long UnitedHealth Group, ABB and Foster Wheeler.
James J. 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. While he cannot provide personalized investment advice or recommendations, he invites you to send comments on his column by
clicking here. Listen to Cramer's RealMoney Radio show on your computer; just click
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here to order Cramer's latest book, "Real Money: Sane Investing in an Insane World," click
here to get his second book, "You Got Screwed!" and click
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