Friday, 05/09/08
Posted 05/11/08,  8:23 pm ET

(Scroll down to see Jim's comments below)

 
 
Today's date:  Friday, 05/09/08

  Dow Jones: 12,745  - 120
  NASDAQ:   2,445   -  5
  S&P 500:   1,388    - 9
 
 
 
 
 
First Segment
 
 
Opening Segment 1 Title: 'Slick Moves'

.  .  .  .  .

Featured Stock(s): Continental Resources Inc. (CLR)

See CLR's official website here.

See the Yahoo! Finance profile for CLR here.



See Opening Segment 2, below...
 
After this segment, you can see Jim's SUDDEN:DEATH picks here >>


JJC:   My week of public humiliation and shame is almost over. We're down to one last whiff, one last blown call. If you remember I've spent all week talking about stocks I got wrong. I was too negative on Google and Comcast, I was being to positive on Sheering Plow all the way down and yesterday I wasn't trusting Ruth Frankford, the Coach CEO, when I should have been telling you to buy his stock hand over fist. These were all classic whiffs, I missed the tops or bottoms because I misjudged or just missed some important pieces of information that I should have been able to process.

The last whiff of the week is Continental Resources Inc. (CLR).

.  .  .  .  .

You haven't heard about CLR from me. So it's difficult for me to wear the post it...The one good thing about CLR, at least from the point of view of you watching me continuing to whiff, is that this one was a called third strike. I kept the bat on my shoulder, and I got called out looking. I liked the stock back on January 15, when I was really starting to look at the all the local, the domestic oil and gas companies that were drilling, and strange places like the Dakotas. I liked what I saw, I just didn't like the price. Here was a company that was drilling for oil and gas in the northern Rockies, the Midwest and the Gulf Coast, but 75% of its reserves were in the Dakotas and Montana. Their main play right now is the Red River Play. This is a river in North Dakota. Continental's most important play, however, is the Blackened Shale in Northwestern North Dakota and Northeastern Montana. This is no Barnett shale in Texas, which is the biggest natural gas mine in the country, nor is the Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania, another bountiful find. But it's still got great potential. Right now it's only 25% of Continentals's reserves, but many people think it could be a whole lot bigger. I wanted to tell you about this stock before I explain how I blew the call, because I never told you about it in the first place. Here's how I completely screwed this one up, proving that Cramer is indeed, a sad clown. When I found this stock it was $26.15, which was at its 52 week high when I found it. I was being cute and kept the bat on my shoulder. I was waiting for a pull back for my perfect pitch before recommending it and I kept waiting and waiting and waiting and then of course when I got my perfect pitch and the stock pulled to 22, what did I do? It would have been a steal, what did I do? I still didn't recommend it, I still kep the bat on my shoulder as they tossed it at me. Instead of doing what my discipline says which is to buy at your price, I ignored it thinking, hmm it must be going down because oil could go over, I better you there is even a better pitch on the way.

.  .  .  .  .

So I didn't swing. And then sure enough, it jumped back up to $28 and for about three weeks still Cramer said nothing. There I was biding my time, waiting for the perfect pitch, but there is no perfect pitch in this game. CLR wasn't biding its time. It wasn't waiting around for me to recommend it before taking off. The stock then exploded,going from $25.91 on March 24, to $53.22, where it is now. But no, no, I had to wait for the perfect pitch. That's a double that I missed. CLR just reported a fantastic quarter. Beating by 4 cents with a monster production rate output of what they were going to produce in the future, even though the production this quarter wasn't what I wanted, because of a gas plant outage. CLR expected yearend 2008 production to be up 48% from last year. Like I said before, there are oil and gas stocks with production growth that are also growing the preserves.

.  .  .  .  .

Those are the ones you want. CLR is one of them. I could have given it to you in the 20s. Now it's in the 50s because I was too cute, as many of our female callers acknowledge nightly. That was my biggest mistake. I knew CLR was big, but I thought it was late. I thought I was late. I kept thinking better pitch, better pitch. I never even thought about how much higher it could go and this gets to a fundamental lesson. When you believe something, when you believe in a theory, when you think you're right on a macro, big theory, pull the trigger. Just say okay, we're not going to be pennywise, we're not going to get the perfect pitch. Let's buy some and if it comes down, we buy more. If not, the worst that happens is that we'll make a little money on what we put on.

That, by the way, is investing rule #3 in Jim Cramer's Real Money. If I had followed my own rule, I would have at least mentioned this one to you, and you could've caught a double, even in a small position, instead of missing everything because I was too cautious and wouldn't take the bat off my shoulder. Now CLR is spending more money on drilling, they've bought some land in my favorite area, the Marcellus Shale, which remember the democrats think is a very bad veal dish, but it's a Cramer fave. It just came out with great numbers.

.  .  .  .  .

I hate to recommend a stock at $53.22 that I missed at $25, but the truth is that as long as oil and gas stays strong, this one is going to keep going higher. I missed it once, but I've learned my lesson, I'm a believer. That means that I would buy a teeny weeny position now and wait for a pull back.

.  .  .  .  .

The Bottom Line!:      I kept the bat on my shoulder, got called out on strikes and Continental Resources Inc. (CLR) because I spent too much time worrying about getting a perfect pitch, and not enough time just trying to be able to put a little bit of...To not repeat my mistake, if you believe in a stock and it's expensive, bunt, just put in a small position, you might get lucky. Or you might get unlucky, but you cuold've caught a double, and that was sweet.

.  .  .  .  .

 

   
 

Stock Snapshots - Includes all stocks mentioned above

 

 

Jim
Cramer's
rating on
this stock

STOCK
SYMBOL

Closing
price
that
day

Opening
price
next
day

Full Company Name/Comments
(see comments above for each)


CLR

53.18

na

Continental Resources Inc. (CLR)


       

 

 

 



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Second Segment
 
 
Final Segment 2 Title: 'Wall of Shame'

CEO, Martin Sullivan

.  .  .  .  .

Featured Stock(s): American International Group (AIG)

 
After this segment, you can see Jim's SUDDEN:DEATH picks here >>

        
JJC:   Very important Wall of Shame update... we've got some changes, some re-arranging we have to do. We all know that Kerry Killinger has been busy running Washington Mutual (WM) into the ground and that's pretty much of a daily endeavor, and he's been very successful at that.

However, it's time because we've got a guy now who is so bad, there is just no way he doesn't deserve to be at the top. That is the CEO of American International Group (AIG), appointed by my friend Elliot Spitzer, to replace a guy named Greenburg, who was actually a pretty good manager, Hank Greenburg.

This is a quarter I can't believe. This is a company that has the guts to accuse me of not doing homework when I put it in the cell block in the $60s last year. They called me and said Jim, you haven't done your homework. You know what I said to the guy who told me I didn't do my homework? I said listen, I'll give you one of the biggest breaks ever: quit. Quit the firm. I'm telling you to get the heck out of that dodge. Well, this quarter was so awful that they're raising money, they have to raise money, they increased the dividend, it was so stupid because I figured they were going to issue stock and buy back stock at the same time. This company is moronic and I don't trust a word they're going to say.

This guy is no longer Martin Sullivan, he's Ed Sullivan and he's running a really big shoe?. I cannot believe how bad this guy is or how bad this quarter was. AIG is a disgrace and if you go and buy stock in that deal, you're just another sucker, you're worse than the people who bought Citi all the way down. I'm not making enough of a point about htis guy, Sullivan. I have to have a Wall of Shame Annex to put things in perspective. I've been just challenged by how bad Sullivan is and how bad AIG is, down 10% today, killed the DOW, who told me all the stuff that they said at their December teach-in with all those Wharton? professors that all this stuff was just protective protective, none of it's protected...who even knows what they own.

There has to be like in the real hall of fame in Cooperstown where they have these special annexes for really unbelieveable things...I've got a special annex in my Wall of Shame...a "Wall of extra shame" because I have to make a point here. Here's the deal. This guy, if there is a board of directors, if there is anything like a referee in this business, an umpire. This man has to be fired. You probably don't hear a lot of other people on tv ever say stuff like this, no. You've probably never heard anyone say it. Why? Because maybe they're afraid he goes to the same club as they do, maybe he's got friends that could lean on me, maybe there's the possibility that this is one of those situations where there was pressure. I work at a great network, I work at a great company. The network and the company allow me to tell it as it is. This stock would go up 10% maybe 20% if this man were fired over the weekend. That's why he's got his own annex on the hall and wall of shame. AIG, if you have any shame, you should fire this man.

 

.  .  .  .  .

 

   
 

Stock Snapshots - Includes all stocks mentioned above

 

 

Jim
Cramer's
rating on
this stock

STOCK
SYMBOL

Closing
price
that
day

Opening
price
next
day

Full Company Name/Comments
(see comments above for each)


AIG

40.28

na

American International Group (AIG)