The next time you find yourself in a conversation that seems to be running on fumes, just ask:
"What do you think about Jim Cramer?"
Some people love him. Some people hate him. Either way, everybody has an opinion on financial journalism's reigning rock star.
I'll confess to being entertained -- and on occasion enlightened -- by the Mad Money star. However, there is nothing I hate more than when Cramer opens up the phones to kick off the Mad Money Lightning Round.
In rat-a-tat-tat fashion, callers will swap boo-yahs and holler a ticker symbol Cramer's way. They'll get a snappy line or two in response, occasionally with a silly sound effect as an exclamation point.
That may be entertaining to watch, but it's the equivalent of nails against a chalkboard to me as an investor. After all, we're all looking for stock ideas. It's just not right to boil down due diligence to the ring of a cash register or a charging bull. Every lightning round finds me with the same three-word plea that Cramer never seems to heed: "Tell me more!"
Walk a short mile in Cramer's long shoes
Let's play a game. I'll pretend to be hosting Cramer's lightning round. You throw out the names of some of my favorite stocks. Ready? Go.
-
Baidu
(NASDAQ:BIDU) : I'll give you 1.3 billion reasons why I like China's leading search engine. -
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters
(NASDAQ:GMCR) : K-Cup is O-K by me. Drink up, java junkies. -
Palm
(NASDAQ:PALM) : The "Pre" show may be over, but check out the feature presentation. -
Las Vegas Sands
(NYSE:LVS) : Always bet on the house -- just don't bet the house on it. -
Ancestry.com
(NASDAQ:ACOM) : Just how many Cramers are out there, anyway?
Next caller?
Did any of that work for you? I hope not. It may be a worthwhile exercise to boil down a stock's buy thesis to a Cramer sound bite or a cocktail-napkin scribble, but you really need to know more than what five seconds from a talking head will tell you.
Baidu is still tearing up the market. Revenue and earnings surged 39% and 42%, respectively, in its latest quarter. Keep in mind that Baidu rang up $72.2 million in net income on just $187.3 million in revenue. You don't find too many domestic companies ringing up 39% in net margins. Closer to home, Yahoo!
Green Mountain is giving Starbucks
Palm's Pre may not have set the smartphone world on fire earlier this year, but its envelope pushing webOS platform is birthing new product line possibilities. Las Vegas Sands isn't just a stateside casino operator; it was able to raise $2.5 billion over the weekend by selling one-quarter of its successful Macau operations. Ancestry.com went public earlier this month, but interest in genealogy continues to grow the site's subscriber base. Ancestry.com members have created more than 12 million family trees, fleshing them out with profiles of 1.25 billion descendants.
You have to be hungry for more
Fleshing out snappy sound bites to a few sentences -- as I just did -- is better, but it's still not enough.
As a member of the Motley Fool Rule Breakers analyst team, I don't settle for bullet points. When we recommended Baidu and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters to subscribers of the growth-stock newsletter service, our advice came in the form of a thorough buy report, complete with financial data and dozens of exploratory observations. There was also a Q&A session with a fellow analyst.
Due diligence doesn't end there, of course. A vibrant community of analysts and subscribers continue to discuss the recommendations, with updates as the fundamentals change for the better or worse.
Does Mad Money do that? Of course not. It may be weeks, months, or even years before a stock is revisited during the show's lightning round. And, as you can expect, you'll be left hanging with the same three words.
Tell me more.
Whether you join me and my fellow analysts for a free trial in time for the next batch of monthly recommendations or not, never settle for less information than you deserve when the time comes to plunk down your hard-earned money on a stock.
You deserve better than that.
Boo-yah!
This article was first published May 28, 2009. It has been updated.
Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz realizes that wedding vows may take all of two words, but stock relationships need more. He does not own shares in any of the stocks in this story. Baidu and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters are Motley Fool Rule Breakers recommendations. Starbucks is a Motley Fool Stock Advisor pick. The Fool has a disclosure policy
