Jim Cramer saw nothing but mindless, willy-nilly selling on Wednesday, especially when three perfectly good stocks were sold off for no reason. What is so bad out there for investors to fear?
Cramer considers Dow Chemical, RR Donnelley and General Electric to be three solid companies with good stories. He has emphasized them repeatedly on CNBC's "Mad Money."
"Declines like we have seen in these three stocks have become endemic in this market," Cramer said. (Tweet This)
In order to figure out why someone would sell these stocks, Cramer tried to figure out the mindset of the seller. For example, perhaps a seller would get rid of Dow Chemical because they are trying to dodge the three or four points of pain that could be caused by declining earnings estimates, even though there is no sign that is happening.
In Cramer's perspective, any investor who sells Dow right now doesn't care about getting a high-quality company with a 3.8 percent yield that could be headed to 4 percent if the stock drops a couple of points. That is fantastic yield in a world when the 10-year Treasury has slightly more than 2 percent.
Or how about commercial printing company RR Donnelley?
What the heck could be so dangerous about owning a company with a gigantic cash flow like RR Donnelley? As far as Cramer is concerned, with a 6.6 percent yield the company is paying investors to wait for its breakup that will divide it into three companies that are worth more than the whole.
"How could someone want out of RR Donnelley that badly? I can't get my head around it. How can this stock be so dangerous to people that they have to get rid of it at this very moment instead of waiting for all the positives to unfold?" Cramer asked.
Then there is General Electric, with a 3.5 percent yield and has some of the fastest organic growth of any industrial out there. Cramer has watched as the company has become more and more industrially oriented, with only 10 percent of its business coming from finance.
Yes, it does have 6 percent of revenues driven from China and 13 percent of the company is devoted to oil and gas. But that leaves 81 percent of the company in fantastic shape and growing nicely. That could translate into dividend boosts and buyback galore.
Cramer used these three stocks as examples, but he could have chosen from dozens of stocks. He is concerned with the amount of good companies with good yields that are doing fairly well that are being sold off.
"It is as if the whole cohort of decent stocks with good yields and some economic risk has to be banished from portfolios wherever they might be found," Cramer said.
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It is this exact sentiment that makes the market so unforgiving, and makes investors feel like there is something bad lurking behind every corner.
The only conclusion that Cramer could draw from the selling mindset is that people think that things are not getting better, and that the Fed will foolishly raise rates. That is why these stocks are for sale.
It's the best explanation that Cramer had, and while it might not be a positive or negative, it's a way to make sense of the ridiculousness that is occurring.
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