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Jan.04

11:18 AM ET

Friday, 4 Jan 2008

Sell Block: Bill Miller's Trip-Up at Legg

Posted By:Tom Brennan

Sectors:Financial Services | Insurance | Health Care | Technology | Telecommunications

Thanks to the poor performance of legendary money manager Bill Miller, Legg Mason's facing a ton of investor redemptions, Cramer said.

Miller lagged the market by 10% in 2007, and that was after a less-than-stellar 2006. And the people who put their hard-earned cash into Legg Mason's [LM Loading... () ] funds have noticed. That's why money has been pouring out of the domestic equity mutual funds division for the past six quarters, and the whole mutual funds division for four of the last seven quarters.

This is bad news for Legg Mason, Cramer said, because the company takes a cut of the assets it manages, and right now those assets seem to be disappearing. Not to mention, Citigroup [C Loading... () ] owns 7% of Legg Mason's shares outstanding, and Cramer thinks Chuck Prince replacement Vikram Pandit is eager to sell. So, needless to say, LM's a sell.

But that's not all an investor can gleen from Legg Mason's unfortunate circumstances. Miller's going to be forced to unload some of his holdings to meet those redemption demands, and that means "some serious negative pressure on a lot of stocks," Cramer said. The key for Homegamers who own these companies is to know which to sell and which to buy on the dip.

Legg Mason has big positions in Countrywide Financial [CFC Loading... () ], American International Group [AIG Loading... () ] and Capital One [COF Loading... () ], and Cramer recommended getting out of all of them before Miller takes these stocks down.

But Cramer would use any pullback to buy Eastman-Kodak [UPL Loading... () ], Google [GOOG Loading... () ], UnitedHealth [UNH Loading... () ] and Sprint-Nextel [S Loading... () ], if Homegamers have the chance.

Jim's charitable trust owns Citigroup.

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