With the last of the big earnings out of the way, we won't see any major downgrades the rest of '09, TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says. We should be in research heaven starting today. We have unwritten rules at the end of the year in this game: no big downgrades. And with almost no earnings reports left for the year, there is little reason to expect any.
Given that the last major earnings reports -- General Mills (GIS) (Cramer's Take), Research In Motion (RIMM) (Cramer's Take) and Nike (NKE) (Cramer's Take) -- were all worth praising it is hard to see why this year should be any different.
Of course, there will be spoilers. You can predict that the press will say that the holiday season is bad, and if it isn't, well so what. The press is entitled to make endless mistakes. In fact, that's part of the fun of being a writer or an editor vs. being a fund manager.
It's easy to talk about how many people will be kicked out of their homes from the burgeoning foreclosure pool, which now includes McMansions. Never any mention, by the way, that they peaked months ago. You can expect half a dozen stories from all of the majors about how every loan modification plan has been a failure.
Oh, and of course, what was I thinking: The hedge funds short the dollar or long oil have to take profits and when they do they have to augment the new direction of where they are going lest they look bad.
But the research? We should be in nirvana. Take a piece that came out this week about the mobile Internet from Morgan Stanley. It is chock full of recommendations, particularly about Apple (AAPL) (Cramer's Take) and Google (GOOG) (Cramer's Take), two stocks that could use a push. Amazon's (AMZN) (Cramer's Take) praised, too.
Or the Citigroup "Playbook 2010: The Biggest Cycle in Over 10 Years," about the semis, which pretty much recommends everyone but focuses particularly on Intel (INTC) (Cramer's Take) and Nvidia (NVDA) (Cramer's Take), two of my faves. This report predicts wildly bullish things and if it hadn't come out on the week that the Federal Trade Commission decided to waste taxpayer money penalizing one of our great manufacturers, Intel, might have had resonance.
Suffice it to say that we are in good shape when it comes to the downgrade front so it's one less thing to fret about as we round the stretch for a great 2009.
Jim Cramer is co-founder and chairman 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)
12-18-2009 @ 9:02AM
redapplemac said...
Nice Jimmy thanks for everything you do for the home-gamers.
12-18-2009 @ 10:19AM
nickerson said...
Want to know if Cramer is doing BECKY QUICK and the long nose one on POWER LUNCH?????
12-18-2009 @ 10:31AM
ebrandler34 said...
Like the new photo; much more professional.
Sorry, though, Jimbo ... there's only so many people you can "bark into the carnival". It's been a merry ride, and I'll admit that I got off earlier than I should have, but it's very hard to see AAPL push to 235, or GOOG to 660 by Spring. Seemingly, the analysts have those numbers under the category "Sure Thing". It always bothers me when people come to me with "sure things"....
12-25-2009 @ 5:30PM
sgentilejr said...
While Cramer could be correct in that we might not see many "individual" company downgrades for a while, since earnings season is over for now_____ What Cramer could be overlooking is how devastating to the stock markets the report of declines in overall Christmas sales could be. What we all know is the stores cut their prices and slimmed down their profit margins to attract Christmas shoppers. However, what we don’t now yet is if lower prices were enough to entice consumers into spending more and going deeper into debt? If Christmas gross sales come in lower than expected it can be viewed by Wall Street as a Downgrade for "one and all" 2010. Keep your fingers crossed for now.