Jim's Comments BEFORE the interview:      Winner's win.  Pretty simple, I know...  It's one of my rules...  When you've got a stock that can't stop making you money... and the story just keeps getting better and better...  you want to hang on.   It's so difficult when you have these stocks that keep going up.  You know I like to take a little off the table, but you've got to hang onto your core position.  

I can't think of a stock that I think better encapsulates the whole notion of staying with a core position - in other words, having that position over a long period of time and owning it, not renting it - is Apache Corp. (APA)... which seems to hit a new high pretty much everyday, like it did yesterday, and it did again intraday today...

Right now, APA is the king of the oil patch... an oil and gas exploration company that has the two things every producer in the business of making Texas Tea needs...  production growth and reserve growth.   Remember, that's how we measure them on this show.  We don't just say, oh, Exxon (XOM)'s a really big company and we want to own it...  We want growth.

Every oil company benefits from high prices, but only some are truly taking advantage of the high prices...  APA increased its production by 12% in 2007...  It increased its crude reserves gigantically... the 22nd consecutive annual increase.

Now here's the number that is just incredible...  It replaced 167% of its 2007 production... meaning it found more oil and gas, than it took out of the ground and sold for the year.  Most of that reserve replacement came from new drilling... not from sitting around and trying to re-evaluate what they had.  APA seems to be the master, when it comes to finding oil and gas.  This is everything we want in an oil and gas stock.

Not only has Apache, the company, done well...  APA, the stock, has been one of our best performers.  I originally got behind it on July 12th...  Remember that series I did, where I said in a bull market, in a completely flip way, that stocks that are at $80, tend to go to $120, and I had this one at $84-89...  I said that, in a bull market, it will go up...  And, sure enough, stocks that go to $100 then seem to make it to $120...   I know it's frivolous logic.  Bear with me.  

The oil patch stayed in bull mode, and APA's at $130...  A 53% gain...  Should it have happened?   I don't know, but I'm trying to express to you that this is where the action is...

Behind every truly great stock is a great CEO...   The man behind APA is named Steven Farris...  I say a lot of nice things about CEOs on this show, but there is one word of praise that stands above all the others, and I will say it about this man...   This man, Steven Farris, is bankable... or he's money.

When Farris came on the show, back on November 12th, he made one of the most bullish cases for a stock that any CEO has ever made on Mad Money...  I just stopped trading and said that this is one you've got to buy...  He made it sound like APA was an absolute buy right then and there.  He radiated bullishness...

Since his last visit, APA's up over 35%.  That's in under five months... and, if you'll remember, those five months were some of the most horrible months we can all recall...  So, prepare yourself, because it's my pleasure to tell you that we've got Steve Farris - the most bankable CEO in the oil patch - right back here with us...   Steven, welcome back to Mad Money...