TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says stocks like CIT need to avoided, not growth stories like Google, Apple and RIM.At Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) (Cramer's Take) they are not ring-fencing. They aren't ring fencing at Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) (Cramer's Take) either. Or Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) (Cramer's Take). Or Coke (NYSE: KO) (Cramer's Take), for that matter.
What's ring-fencing? It's the term being used by financial institutions to keep the mortgage portfolios away from the rest of a company's loan exposure. I first heard it on the CIT (NYSE: CIT) (Cramer's Take) conference call, a company that for lack of a better analogy, really whiffed at the home mortgage game when things got tough. Actually it's not the first time I ever heard the term. We had some long horns at a farm in New Jersey. We had to ring fence them so they didn't gore and kill our horses.
CIT's not a cattle ranch. It's a lender.
On its conference call, where it had to issue equity to cover dividends, you could tell there was a real sense of relief from management. As one of the hardest hit non-bank mortgage originators that is still solvent, CIT put together what amounts to a rescue package that allowed them to sell most of their mortgage portfolio to Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) (Cramer's Take) to save their balance sheet and allow them to continue to lend to commercial businesses, particularly transportation companies, their true forte. I am sure if you own CIT you are thrilled that everything worked out and all you did was experience a giant loss on your stock's value.
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