Yesterday was Jim Cramer's birthday. How do I know? He said so during last night's Mad Money on CNBC.
Yes, I'm watching. Yesterday was Day 2 of my Eye on Cramer experiment, where I will watch a week of his show and provide a second opinion.
Cramer kicks off his show by digging into Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's disappointing update yesterday.
"As I predicted, the market hated it," Cramer says.
Really? He may have been critical of Geithner in earlier shows, but I didn't get that out of Monday's show. His claim a day earlier was that bank stocks may rally after Geithner's performance. It would be Oppenheimer's Meredith Whitney, the dead-on bank bear, that would have the final say in deflating the financial services sector.
Cramer goes on to take a look at Transocean (NYSE: RIG ) and Schlumberger (NYSE: SLB ) , seeking out a play on a potential turnaround in oil prices. He pulls up a chart for deepwater driller Transocean, and kudos to Cramer for taking the time to educate his audience on the nuances of technical analysis. He concedes that Transocean has a bullish chart -- and an attractive valuation at just four times earnings -- but he's not convinced.
Cramer is worried that the company will be unlikely to maintain its rates when its contracts are up for renewal in a few years, given the dramatic plunge in oil prices. Technical analysis and fundamental meat to boot? This is when Cramer is at his edu-tainment finest. He prefers Schlumberger as a better, more diversified play on the bottoming-out of crude.
Later in the show, Cramer opens up the phones for the lightning round. I'm uncomfortable with boiling down due diligence to a snazzy one-liner. "This thing's like a utility," he says about Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT ) , suggesting Duke Energy (NYSE: DUK ) instead.
Really? I'm not a fan of Microsoft. I see its relevance fading with every passing quarter. I still don't get the "utility" tag. Duke Energy sports high profit margins for a sleepy utility, but Microsoft's net margins are nearly three times greater.
The rest of the frenetic lightning round plays out like a waiter trying to steer the hungry to off-menu specials the kitchen wants to move. A call asking about BHP Billiton finds Cramer preferring Freeport-McMoRan (NYSE: FCX ) as a better mineral stock. A viewer wanting more clarity on Petrobras (NYSE: PBR ) is offered ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP ) , instead. Sure, ConocoPhillips offers a healthier yield than Petrobras, but I'd rather bet on the headier growth potential at Petrobras and pass on the quarterly dividend checks.
Now Wednesday night's show beckons. Bring it on, Cramer.
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