Posted Nov 21st 2008 9:32AM by Jim Cramer
Filed under: Ford Motor (F), General Motors (GM), Market matters, Citigroup Inc. (C), Cramer on BloggingStocks
TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says if Citi is bailed out or bought and the autos get financing, we'd be given a chance to rally. There was a time when I used to talk about the black holes and how if we got them fixed we could tackle the other problems from strength and not weakness.
When we last looked at the seven black holes only FordGMChrysler (collectively as one) and
Citigroup (NYSE:
C) (
Cramer's Take) remained.
The last two days of annihilation came right back to the inability to solve for those black holes.
Now much has gone wrong for the market since then. Leveraged loans have started to spoil and commercial mortgages have soured. The life insurance annuity issues, pressured by endless declines in the market, get worse by the day.
Continue reading Cramer on BloggingStocks: The remaining black holes need fixing
Posted Nov 20th 2008 9:09AM by Jim Cramer
Filed under: Market matters, Kellogg Co (K), Colgate-Palmolive (CL), General Mills (GIS), Procter and Gamble (PG), Unilever ADR (UL), Oil, Stocks to Buy, Cramer on BloggingStocks
TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says comparisons will be so easy that companies with strong pricing will outperform. These year-over-year declines in energy costs along with the inability of the Chinese market to fall much further are the two bright spots that long-term investing can give us. The notion that there are consumer-products companies that have put in price increases that for the most part are sticking and that the developing world could come back with lower rates, makes me feel that the
Unilever (NYSE:
UN) (
Cramer's Take)/
Procter (NYSE:
PG) (
Cramer's Take)/
Colgate (NYSE:
CL) (
Cramer's Take) cohort could have a remarkable rally.
But not until after this current quarter, because the price decreases have been incredibly slow to come in and the dollar is so strong.
I key on those because frankly, oil looks like it is going to struggle to hold $50, and while that is a sure sign of a terrible recession coming, it is, alas, good news for the companies like
Kellogg (NYSE:
K) (
Cramer's Take) and
General Mills (NYSE:
GIS) (
Cramer's Take) that use energy and whose product pricing has held.
Continue reading Cramer on BloggingStocks: Lower oil will be a boon -- next year
Posted Nov 19th 2008 9:12AM by Jim Cramer
Filed under: Market matters, Stocks to Buy, Cramer on BloggingStocks
TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says eventually, the credit markets will thaw, and this one will take off like a rocket. Cheap isn't always relative. Consider the case of
Shaw Group (NYSE:
SGR) (
Cramer's Take), the infrastructure play with the nuclear bent that has tons of business around the world building nuke plants that are competitive with oil and nat gas even at these prices, but obviously are much better for the environment.
Shaw's doing great -- big order book, no cancellations or stretch-outs (unlike
ABB (NYSE:
ABB) (
Cramer's Take) or
McDermott (NYSE:
MDR) (
Cramer's Take)), and most important, its stock is trading a mere dollar and a half above its cash.
It's absurd, as the CEO told me last night on a pre-empted edition of the 6 p.m. "Mad Money." The valuation makes no sense.
Continue reading Cramer on BloggingStocks: Shaw is actually cheap
Posted Nov 18th 2008 8:58AM by Jim Cramer
Filed under: Market matters, Citigroup Inc. (C), Bank of America (BAC), Cramer on BloggingStocks, Financial Crisis, MetLife Inc. (MET)
TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says the action in some of the banks and insurers is sickening. They've gotten to the fortress banks. They have crushed everything financial because the word is out: No more bonuses and no more dividends if you take federal money under President Obama.
I don't know if it is true. But I sense from the action since the election that something big and bad is happening to the banks and the insurers. It looks like there is a quid pro quo developing and that quid pro quo is that if you want to get help from the government you are not going to get a bonus and you have to hurt your shareholders.
What else can the takeaway be for the way
Citigroup (NYSE:
C) (
Cramer's Take) and
Bank of America (NYSE:
BAC) (
Cramer's Take) are acting? What else is there driving
Prudential (NYSE:
PRU) (
Cramer's Take) and
MetLife (NYSE:
MET) (
Cramer's Take)? These are big firms! Great firms!
Continue reading Cramer on BloggingStocks: The destruction of the financials
Posted Nov 17th 2008 8:52AM by Jim Cramer
Filed under: Ford Motor (F), General Motors (GM), Market matters, Cramer on BloggingStocks
TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says everything depends on getting a deal done. So what if
GM NYSE: (
GM) (
Cramer's Take) hangs at the balance and the automakers don't sound like they are going to get a deal anytime soon. What matters, of course, are the futures! Today's futures action is brought to you by a combined Europe and Asia arithmetic session where Japan rallied and Europe is not down 3%. If Europe rallies at all we have a higher opening and all of this is ... totally fatuous.
Our market has decoupled from those others for the most part because we are in our own particular auto hell. We simply are not going to be the same economy if we are not bailing out the autos.
For the record, if it had to do with finance and discipline, I would just tell Cerberus, "You made a big mistake, nothing for you," and I would tell GM and
Ford (NYSE:
F) (
Cramer's Take), "Time for prepackaged bankruptcies, and the feds will give you debtor-in-possession financing."
Continue reading Cramer on BloggingStocks: The autos supersede the futures here
Posted Nov 14th 2008 9:30AM by Jim Cramer
Filed under: Intel (INTC), Market matters, Citigroup Inc. (C), Goldman Sachs Group (GS), Cramer on BloggingStocks
TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says futures and ETFs are calling the shots, so nothing can be trusted. OK, so let's see. Europe was up about half of what we were, which isn't bad given that we were up a little more than the day before, which puts us so we should probably be down about 1% ... but there are animal spirits that looked great yesterday, so we won't be down that much, so bid a half percent down from the close and then walk it up as we get closer (unless there is news).
There, that's the nonsense game I used to play in my head about what the buyers and sellers of futures were going to do.
It's pretty right.
It's pretty stupid.
It's pretty right and stupid because it is what we trade off of, but what we should be trading off of is whether we are going to save the automakers or whether there will be another run against
Goldman Sachs (NYSE:
GS) (
Cramer's Take) or whether
Citigroup's (NYSE:
C) (
Cramer's Take) insider buying is a joke or not. We should be betting on preannouncements and weakness and no ECB cuts, not on some ratio of Europe to us.
Continue reading Cramer on BloggingStocks: What a phony market
Posted Nov 13th 2008 9:00AM by Jim Cramer
Filed under: General Electric (GE), Intel (INTC), Market matters, Goldman Sachs Group (GS), Cramer on BloggingStocks, NASDAQ
TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says analysts will assume the worst is over. They are quite simply wrong. If the Nasdaq rallies today, please ignore it. If you recall our now totally ridiculous run up in the Nasdaq two weeks ago, a run spurred by numerous upgrades of semiconductor and semiconductor equipment companies by analysts who are always bullish no matter what the fundamentals are, you know that it was dead wrong.
Dead wrong. I said it at the time, but in this market the bulls don't give a darn because all of their work is based on "cheapness" and that you buy stocks at this stage of a recession because you know we are almost out of it.
These are lies.
Today
Intel's (NASDAQ:
INTC) (
Cramer's Take) really cheap. Using a Warren Buffett analogy -- although he doesn't like tech, just
GE (NYSE:
GE) (
Cramer's Take) and
Goldman (NYSE:
GS) (
Cramer's Take), two "much easier to figure out companies" -- Intel's now genuinely cheap. But then again, I forgot that Buffett's always right -- see
Doug Kass' column -- and those who say he is wrong are simply short-term trader types.
Continue reading Cramer on BloggingStocks: Sell the Nazz rally
Posted Nov 12th 2008 9:30AM by Jim Cramer
Filed under: Market matters, Citigroup Inc. (C), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Federal Natl Mtge (FNM), Amer Intl Group (AIG), Wells Fargo (WFC), Housing, Cramer on BloggingStocks, MBIA Inc (MBI)
TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says that's the real problem, and every little bit helps. Many are decrying that the
AIG (NYSE:
AIG) (
Cramer's Take) bailout now helps the holders of the collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) who bought insurance against them from AIG. The idea is simple: These CDOs are worth, in many cases, next to nothing depending upon the vintages, geographies and FICO scores, but they will now be paid back at pretty much face value -- AIG CEO Ed Liddy said the prices will be negotiated, but I don't see how they can get any less because AIG guaranteed it and the U.S. is not abrogating any of these guarantees.
It's an obvious windfall and still one more piece of the stinking puzzle that involves unwinding the bogus real estate finance that prevailed from 2004 to 2007. The bigger issue, though, is whether the government will then take over
MBIA (NYSE:
MBI) (
Cramer's Take) and
Ambac (NYSE:
ABK) (
Cramer's Take) -- I know people at those companies say they don't need it, so OK, they don't ... but let's say they do for the purposes of reality -- and have them make good on all of the credit default swaps they wrote against bad CDOs.
If the government is willing, they can buy several trillion dollars of these easily through this method and then sit on them and hopefully they will come back to some value.
Continue reading Cramer on BloggingStocks: Fix the home glut
Posted Nov 11th 2008 8:28AM by Jim Cramer
Filed under: Google (GOOG), General Electric (GE), Market matters, Citigroup Inc. (C), Bank of America (BAC), Goldman Sachs Group (GS), Cramer on BloggingStocks
TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says that bid has kept a floor under equities, but things are dire without it. Without the futures ramping, don't things seem so expensive? Those consumer nondurables -- uh-oh, they have dollar pressure. The stimulus package of China? Is that why we bought
Fluor (NYSE:
FLR) (
Cramer's Take)? Where are the orders? All those oil stocks looked so inexpensive with oil at $66 going to $70. But we just paid $2.25 at the pump with no line and the futures are at $60.
Citigroup (NYSE:
C) (
Cramer's Take) hit a 52-week low despite talking about an acquisition, and
Bank of America (NYSE:
BAC) (
Cramer's Take) is a smidge above the 52-week low. What happens if it takes it out? What happens if
Google (NASDAQ:
GOOG) (
Cramer's Take) takes out $300? Where is the Nasdaq bid, for heaven's sake? Where did all of those morning buyers go who kept coming back right until the end?
And that's the problem, isn't it? The collective cheapness of equities vs. the overvaluation of stocks. We simply don't get an opportunity to do anything but lose less than the other guy, and we are supposed to like it because stocks only get this inexpensive once or twice in a lifetime.
Continue reading Cramer on BloggingStocks: Without futures support, stocks look ugly
Posted Nov 10th 2008 9:55AM by Jim Cramer
Filed under: Cisco Systems (CSCO), General Electric (GE), Coca-Cola (KO), PepsiCo (PEP), Ford Motor (F), General Motors (GM), Home Depot (HD), Market matters, Citigroup Inc. (C), Johnson and Johnson (JNJ), Sprint Nextel Corp (S), Alcoa Inc (AA), Bank of America (BAC), Boeing Co (BA), CBS Corp 'B' (CBS), Centex Corp (CTX), ConocoPhillips (COP), D.R.Horton (DHI), Goldman Sachs Group (GS), Procter and Gamble (PG), Amer Intl Group (AIG), KB HOME (KBH), Lennar Corp'A' (LEN), Wachovia Corp (WB), QUALCOMM Inc (QCOM), Deere and Co (DE), Las Vegas Sands (LVS), Freep't McMoRan Copper (FCX), Wells Fargo (WFC), Cramer on BloggingStocks, MetLife Inc. (MET)
TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says tons of stocks look like good buys, and they go down all the time. All weekend I heard it. Stocks have gotten too cheap. Put 'em away cheap. Don't worry about 'em cheap. To which I say, stocks are only cheap if the companies make it. Stocks are only cheap if the bondholders don't claim them.
Every day I see cheap stocks.
Ford (NYSE:
F) (
Cramer's Take) reported this morning. Ridiculously cheap. How cheap is
Sprint (NYSE:
S) (
Cramer's Take), for heaven's sake? Did you see the
Sunrise Senior Living (NYSE:
SRZ) (
Cramer's Take) numbers? That stock should show up when you enter "cheap stock" in Google. Except
Las Vegas Sands (NYSE:
LVS) (
Cramer's Take) comes up.
When Warren Buffett says stocks are cheap, or Jeremy Grantham or Steve Leuthold or Jeremy Siegel, it's very heartening. You just want to go out there and buy cheap stocks like
CBS (NYSE:
CBS) (
Cramer's Take) and
Williams-Sonoma (NYSE:
WSM) (
Cramer's Take) and
Ann Taylor (NYSE:
ANN) (
Cramer's Take) and
Talbots (NYSE:
TLB) (
Cramer's Take).
Continue reading Cramer on BloggingStocks: 'Cheap' is meaningless
Posted Nov 7th 2008 10:00AM by Jim Cramer
Filed under: Market matters, Viacom (VIA), CBS Corp 'B' (CBS), Chesapeake Energy (CHK), Las Vegas Sands (LVS), Cramer on BloggingStocks
TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says if these guys can't parse it, what hope do we have? People ask me why I am so often freaked out about what is happening daily in this market. Let me give you four reasons: Sheldon Adelson, Sumner Redstone, Howard Lester and Aubrey McClendon.
All four of these gentlemen got overextended and bought too much of their own stock or the stock of another company and got margined out.
These are great American businessmen. They are much smarter than I am -- much smarter than almost any people in business -- and they completely and utterly screwed up. You cannot possibly say that they did anything else.
Howard Lester created
Williams-Sonoma (NYSE:
WSM) (
Cramer's Take). He built that company into the best housewares company in the world with a name synonymous with quality. He is a titan. Lester sold 1,150,000 Williams-Sonoma shares to meet margin calls at prices that are down so huge from the highs as to make me think that if he doesn't know what to do -- and he clearly doesn't -- with his company or his stock, how the heck am I to know?
Continue reading Cramer on BloggingStocks: Four reasons to be skittish on the market
Posted Nov 6th 2008 9:57AM by Jim Cramer
Filed under: Cisco Systems (CSCO), Market matters, Wells Fargo (WFC), Cramer on BloggingStocks
TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says the paltry half-point cut means we're headed lower once again. Wrong!
The European Central Bank needed to move in lock step with the Bank of England. It left us hanging with a half-point cut.
That means we're sunk again.
The near-term tug of war just got uglier. Without the ECB cutting as much as the BOE, we have no reason to buy.
Period.
Last night, in a meeting with a bunch of hedge fund managers, there was uniform agreement that the market has to be bought with huge rate cuts, that you need to ignore the near-term
Cisco (NASDAQ:
CSCO) (
Cramer's Take) (to use the generic version of crummy earnings) and go with the
Wells Fargo (NYSE:
WFC) (
Cramer's Take) offering that will make it so lending will come again and demand be spurred.
Continue reading Cramer on BloggingStocks: European central bank lets us all down
Posted Nov 5th 2008 9:15AM by Jim Cramer
Filed under: Google (GOOG), Apple Inc (AAPL), General Electric (GE), Market matters, 3M Corporation (MMM), United Technologies (UTX), Presidential elections, Cramer on BloggingStocks
TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says stocks are too extended to go along for the ride. Uh oh, where it the persistent bid? Did it disappear? Is it resting? Has it gone away?
Throughout the last three weeks we have seen a persistent bid underneath the market, mostly led by Nasdaq futures, that was relentless and dropped off only once when
GE (NYSE:
GE) (
Cramer's Take) was reported to have guided down.
No one knows who the buyer or buyers were, and because volume has been thin, the buyers had their way at the opening and then again at some exquisite marking up at the end of the day.
Everyone who has tried to fade this phalanx has been chewed up and spit out. It has been there irrespective of news flow. Many of the earnings reports in this period have been extremely disappointing -- in fact, only
Apple (NASDAQ:
AAPL) (
Cramer's Take),
3M (NYSE:
MMM) (
Cramer's Take),
Google (NASDAQ:
GOOG) (
Cramer's Take) and
United Technologies (NYSE:
UTX) (
Cramer's Take) have really delivered. It has been there irrespective of more bailouts, which surely by this time would have started to produce weakness in the market, not strength.
Continue reading Cramer on BloggingStocks: This time, I'll be selling into the bid
Posted Nov 4th 2008 9:13AM by Jim Cramer
Filed under: Market matters, Citigroup Inc. (C), CIT Group (CIT), Cramer on BloggingStocks, Financial Crisis
TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says that Treasury's takeover of the banking system is working, and he's not arguing with it.. So buying troubled assets was always wrong. I got it. All of that wrangling about what to do with the $750 billion was all seat-of-the-pants nonsense. There was no plan.
But what we've been doing, just letting the U.S. own everybody and everything - like the British plan -- is working so why not run with it?
I liked the idea of the Treasury buying troubled assets because I wanted to solve the mortgage crisis. From the looks of things, we were in such bad shape post-Lehman that we couldn't even waste the time doing that. We needed to solve a situation that was about a banking shutdown and the Troubled Asset Relief Program did that. That's why the rally. And that's why the rally continues because TARP has saved the system. The rally will keep rolling until it is clear that the system was saved and everyone from
CIT (NYSE:
CIT) (
Cramer's Take) to
Citigroup (NYSE:
C) (
Cramer's Take) is alive and able to do lending. It is basically making the Treasury the biggest bank on earth and if it is working I am not arguing with it.
Continue reading Cramer on BloggingStocks: Saving the banking system
Posted Nov 3rd 2008 8:48AM by Jim Cramer
Filed under: General Electric (GE), General Motors (GM), Market matters, Cramer on BloggingStocks
TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says we can manufacture reasons to like the market, but the momentum is the real driver. We bought stocks this past week not on earnings, which were pretty much awful, but on a decline in LIBOR and the beginning of the commercial paper program. We took stocks up also because we loved the valuations of equities and they got too cheap.
Now here's a key question. Do we keep taking stocks up in the return of LIBOR normalcy? Is that what drives equities? Do we continue to like stocks off the commercial paper program? If we do, why aren't the principal users of it --
GE (NYSE:
GE) (
Cramer's Take) (AAA-rated) and
GM (NYSE:
GM) (
Cramer's Take) (apparently allowed to use it in some form; so many iterations there) -- jumping much higher?
Do we continue to rally on valuations now that we are up so much? Are they still with us? This weekend I read over and over how 12 times earnings means "buy buy buy," but going into a recession those are meaningless.
Continue reading Cramer on BloggingStocks: Big buyers are fueling the rally
Next Page >
Stock picks and pans for troubled times: RIMM, ED, ISRG, GLW, LEA, SLB, GOOG ...
Is Berkshire Hathaway better than S&P Index?
Closing Bell: Torch Passing on a Friday Rally
