When Jim recommended buying Research in Motion as a trade into the launch of the Blackberry Bold last night, he was doing a little more than duplicating the same trade he'd recommended in Apple ahead of the release of the iPhone 3G.
The Research in Motion trade fits into a long history we have on Mad Money of recommending at least some tech stocks during the summer, which is when they tend to be at their cheapest, and telling people to sell them into higher prices toward the end of the year.
On June 22, 2005, the first summer we were on air, and the third week I'd been working at the show, Jim declared the Cramer Tech Rally of 2005, which he later refined into the Cramer Gadget Rally. (You can read more about how he was wrong to write the ticker symbols of Cisco Systems and Microsoft on his hands when he announced the rally in Jim Cramer's Mad Money: Watch TV, Get Rich.) The gadget-related stocks like Broadcom, Apple and Marvell Tech all had gains in excess of 70% over the duration of the trade, which that time lasted into the beginning of 2006. We talked about a similar rally in the summer of 2006, because since the early '90s tech has much more often than not outperformed the S&P 500 over the third and fourth quarters, and that mostly worked out, too.
I'm not saying we'll see another tech rally this summer. In fact, we may be experiencing the slow death of the summer tech rally. Last year, Jim picked just four stocks, Apple, Google, Amazon and Research in Motion, as his Four Horsemen of Tech on June 6, all of which went on to go higher and then top intraday on Dec. 27. Last summer we started to see the beginning of the economic malaise, to go all Jimmy Carter on you. That's been with us ever since. So we only backed four tech stocks to the hilt, whereas in the previous two years many tech names had worked over the midsummer to late autumn/early winter period.
This year, we're down to just Research in Motion. I know Jim also likes a few other rare tech stocks, but it's July 31 and right now it looks like the "summer tech rally" could be composed solely of RIMM.
Cliff Mason is the Senior Writer of CNBC's Mad Money w/Jim Cramer, and has been that program's primary writer, in cooperation with and under the supervision of Jim Cramer, since he began at CNBC as an intern during the summer of 2005. Mason was the author of a column at TheStreet.com during 2007, which he describes as "hilarious, if short-lived." He graduated from Harvard College in 2007. It was at Harvard that Mason learned to multi-task, mastering the art of seeming to pay attention to professors while writing scripts for Mad Money. Mason has co-written two books with Jim Cramer: Jim Cramer's Mad Money: Watch TV, Get Rich and Stay Mad For Life: Get Rich, Stay Rich (Make Your Kids Even Richer). He is 100% responsible for any parts of either book that you did not like.
Mason has also had a fruitful relationship with Jim Cramer as his nephew for the last 23 years and will hopefully continue to hold that position for many more as long as he doesn't do anything to get himself kicked out of the family.
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