TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says we know how it'll play out. Besides, there's money to be made elsewhere. Nobody's dissing the credit crisis. We all see it. We know when it is back. We know that the write-offs for the banks and brokers and Fannie (NYSE: FNM) (Cramer's Take) and Freddie (NYSE: FRE) (Cramer's Take) will be gigantic if and when the Gang of Four (Ambac (NYSE: ABK) (Cramer's Take), MGIC (NYSE: MTG) (Cramer's Take), MBIA (NYSE: MBI) (Cramer's Take), PMI (NYSE: PMI) (Cramer's Take)) finally chokes to death. But we also know that Boeing (NYSE: BA) (Cramer's Take) and Honeywell (NYSE: HON) (Cramer's Take) and Schlumberger (NYSE: SLB) (Cramer's Take) and Lockheed (NYSE: LMT) (Cramer's Take) and all of the other stocks that are on the move, not to mention anything oil and gas, just aren't that levered to the crisis. I know that is heresy for many of you. How could the crisis not bring everything to its knees?
Because these companies are basically foreign companies. They are just not that important to the credit crumble.
More important, we have all figured out the game. There are endless pools of really stupid/long-term capital that keeps coming in and bailing these clowns out. They either will never admit defeat -- some of the mutual fund holders, like "legendary" Bill Miller -- or they view everything as a bargain -- Corsair -- or they are easily talked into sovereign funds that think they have discovered Citigroup (NYSE: C) (Cramer's Take) at $5, a la 1990. Who knows? Maybe they have. Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER) (Cramer's Take)? I'll buy 10 million shares!! Lehman (NYSE: LEH) (Cramer's Take)? $2 billion in preferred, please. And on and on.
What matters to me is that there seems to be no end to the amount of capital that will go to this sector. No end. Value!
Next thing you will hear there will be someone coming in, a Wilbur Ross, or some other grave dancer, and he will pants the current shareholders and "make out like a bandit" with the monolines. Blah blah blah.
It's not that the crisis is irrelevant. It's that there's so much money around that it has gotten to the "who cares?" status unless you hold common stock of the targets.
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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. At the time of publication, Cramer had no positions in the stocks mentioned.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
4-24-2008 @ 11:51AM
Michael Schneider said...
We hope the markets have settled down for awhile but the market risks have increased near term because some hedge funds could be in some trouble and a big market ht in some area like oil or commodities could force selling across the market. There could be opportunities along with the risks but these seem to be times for value investors to thrive-- go long in other words or have some strong force behind your stock selections like the near term tax windfall.