Solid Names Hold Their Ground

Editor's Note: James Cramer's column runs exclusively on RealMoney.com; this is a special free look at his column. For a free trial subscription to RealMoney.com, click here. This article was published April 22 on RealMoney.

The good ones don't come down big, do they? I have been eyeing

General Motors

(GM) - Get Report

for so long and missing it for so long that I couldn't wait to see how much it would go down today. Maybe today, because I haven't talked about GM on the radio show for a week -- because of vacation -- I could pounce.

Nah, it's barely down. Or how about

Kimberly Clark

(KMB) - Get Report

,

Avon

(AVP) - Get Report

and

Anheuser Busch

(BUD) - Get Report

, three huge winners in this slow economy? Heck, they are up, and up nicely! Talk about relative strength. This BUD's driving me crazy. After a trip to New Mexico last week (where, by the way, the litter laws are a joke), I wanted to pick up a case of that company's stock. "Daddy, is Budweiser the national drink of New Mexico?" my daughter asked me after she had counted 100 cans on the side of the road in one of the most beautiful portions of that state. That's an endorsement.

Or how about these homebuilders? I think they make a ton of sense in an environment where the

Fed

won't pull the trigger. But

DR Horton

(DHI) - Get Report

comes along and blows numbers away, making my possible buy,

Lennar

(LEN) - Get Report

, an impossibility. Same with

Toll Brothers

(TOL) - Get Report

. These stocks just won't quit.Finally, there's that HMO contingent. I figured the market would take down

UnitedHealth Group

(UNH) - Get Report

and

Aetna

(AET)

to levels where I could buy more. Forget it. They are untouched.

At Cramer Berkowitz we always looked at these big down days as important tells for what the market really likes. The market is speaking loudly. Those of you who can't hear it, take that

Sun

and

EMC

out of your ears and give a listen. It's screaming at what's working, and that's not about to change anytime soon. I am afraid it will get narrower -- meaning these groups will get stronger -- before it gets any wider.

Random musings:

Lucent's

(LU)

call was a good one. I am taking that stock off the endangered list. I know, that's unbelievable, but they seem to be doing things right there. In a country where complainers at steel companies have, for more than 40 years, beseeched Washington for succor, what a pleasure it was to deal with Ken Iverson, the man who built

Nucor

(NUE) - Get Report

into the second-largest steelmaker during the last half of the 20th century.

Last week, Iverson, just a young 76, passed away. He didn't get the kind of praise he deserved. Ken, as everyone who ever owned the stock knew him, transformed a bankrupt old line Nuclear Corp. of America into a modern maker of low-cost steel, using mini-mill technology that he championed. He triumphed generating huge returns for his owners, the shareholders, something he never forgot as he prided himself on taking economy class, banned company cars and cut his office staff to 50, one of the smallest of the large companies in America.

What I didn't know, until I read his obituary, was that Iverson was a fighter for integration; he banned segregation and demanded integration as just plain the right thing to do for business and human relations.Ken, we will miss you. We wish there were more like you out there. We wouldn't have any

Enrons

under your watch, just plain old good profits from mundane businesses, without the help of the government or corrupt accountants to do it.

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. At the time of publication, Cramer was long UnitedHealth and Aetna.

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