Don't Be a Snob
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There’s one rule that’s near and dear to Cramer’s heart, and it should be pretty simple to follow: Don’t be a snob.
Pretty much everybody involved in the stock market is a rich person who lives in Manhattan or the suburbs of New York City. The analysts, the money managers, the commentators – they’re almost exclusively concentrated in this one area, and they’re almost all much wealthier than regular people.
Now that might sound like a pretty apparent statement, but think about it. With Wall Street being run almost entirely by rapacious capitalist fat cats – not that there’s anything wrong with that – they are bound to miss some of the best trends out there. If you’re too busy shopping at Neiman Marcus to take a look at Target, that oversight could cost you a great opportunity to make money. Wall Street is almost always late on picking up trends in low-end or mid-grade products because everybody on the Street lives in an upper-class bubble.
Here's an example. How many investment bankers do you see eating at the local Olive Garden? Along with Red Lobster, Oliver Garden is part of Darden Restaurants . Even the analysts whose job it is to cover this stock probably don’t understand it as well as they understand a Morton’s or a Ruth’s Chris. You, the loyal Home Gamers, can capitalize on this deficiency. Back on March 15, 2005, the first day of Mad Money, Cramer got behind Darden, pleading with people not to be snobs and pay attention to this casual dining chain. That day, DRI was a $27.12 stock. By January of 2006 it was trading at over $40.
Most of the big institutional buyers missed the move because they were snobs, Cramer says. They didn’t want to eat at Oliver Garden and they didn’t want to own a piece of its parent company. Because of that, they missed about a 50% gain in nine months. A 13 point upside swing – now that’s something to be snobbish about.
Bottom Line: No offense to the people that run Wall Street, but they have blinders on. Those blinders mean you can make money looking at stocks that run under the Street’s radar.
Questions, comments, suggestions for the Mad Money website? madcap@cnbc.com
