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I recommended a basket of five Russian and Eastern European stocks and, collectively, they're up 13.7%, while the S&P 500 did not even return a full percentage point, over the same period (since the week of April 7th, 2008)...

I regard that as "exhibit A" of why you should be in foreign markets for 20% of your assets...

Now it's time to update our "Warsaw Pact Portfolio"... both because we believe in doing homework... Remember, it's "buy and homework" in Cramerica... not just "buy and hold." That doesn't work if you own that Pfizer (PFE)... okay...

Even though our basket is up 13.7% in less than two months, while the S&P has done virtually nothing, I made a mistake... I made an error when I put this portfolio together... and it needs to be corrected.

I'm embarrassed about... CTC Media, Inc (CTCM), a Russian TV company...

The first four stocks (Mechel (MTL), Wimm-Bill-Dann Foods (WBD), Central European Distribution Corp. (CEDC) and Central European Media Enterprises (CETV)) were really fabulous. I'm actually quite proud of these... MTL, up 19.7%; WBD, up 14.8%; CEDC, up 19.2%; CETV, up 20.1%; and then this stinker... CTCM... This was a comparative disaster, down 5.2%... Worse, on May 6th, it was down as much as 15%! I mean, I was ready to go to Siberia immediately...

I want to keep owning the other four stocks. The thesis behind each one of them is still in tact but, you know what?... I feel like we're back, not to even, but we're down only 5%. I want to cut and run from CTCM... and that's one of the reasons why I wanted to revise the portfolio.

I don't like to just throw them out there and forget about them. That's bush league...

I never should have put both CETV and CTCM in the same basket... purely, at least, as an issue of diversification...

All of CETV's markets seem to be doing well, and it's the one I want to stick with, but what about CTCM?... How could it fail in this environment? The idea here was that commodity wealth would move through Russia's economy. We were right on that with the other stocks... The mineral wealth seems to have trickled down to food and beverages, even though we know that Putin took as much as he could... And WBD and CEDC did well... And it seems to have trickled down to infrastructure, through the government, thus the strength of MTL, the steel company.

But it doesn't seem to have trickled down to CTCM... no... Partially, I think that's because entertainment is a luxury, not a necessity, as food, beverages and infrastructure are... So it takes longer for money to trickle down from Russia's oil and gas wealth...

Also, if you compare CTCM in Russia to CETV in Eastern Europe, you can see how CTCM is in a worse position. Remember, we're weighing which one to keep...

CETV has audience share in its markets, ranging from 18-40%... That's a great proxy for advertising growth in its markets... CTCM just has 12-13% audience share in Russia, so it's not necessarily going to do well, just because the Russian ad market is growing... it's too small.

Plus I think CTCM didn't work, because it overpaid on a big acquisition, a la Time Warner Inc. (TWX) with AOL... or Wall of Shamer, Gary Pruitt from McClatchy (MNI), overpaying for anything... Especially in the media world, overpaying is just deadly...