Cramer: Follow This Conservative Strategy

Mad Money Markets: Focus on Yield

This is a rare market where you don't need excessive risk to get excessive reward, says Mad Money's Jim Cramer, explaining how investors can profit by being conservative.

A strong start to the holiday shoppingseason helped propel the Dow up 291 points Monday, while the S&P gained 2.92 percent and the NASDAQ advanced 3.52 percent. But despite that market rally, “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer urged caution.

“This is the rare market where you don't need excessive risk to get excessive reward ... Just the opposite,” he said. ”Embrace your inner boring self, jettison those high flyers into strength, focus on yield, and you will come out of this European contagion snug, safe and sound.”

Just look at the big market movers Monday like Macy’s , Apple , Google and Amazon . If you bought these names last Wednesday or Friday, Monday’s gain would only take you back to where you were ten days ago. And if you bought today, you need more fabulous retail numbers and news that the European Central Bank has rescued the banks.

Cramer’s strategy is a conservative one—own a diversified group of “boring” high yielders and a good growth stock or two. The best judge of this, he said, is the 52-week high list—a group of about a dozen stocks that have survived this brutal year.

Those names include some the “Mad Money” host has consistently recommended:

• Kinder Morgan Energy Partners : This pipeline company has projected a big dividend boost on top of its 6 percent yield.
• MarkWest Energy Partners : This 5.5 percent yielder processes and transports natural gas out of the recently discovered Marcellus shale formation, among other regions.
• Cedar Fair : Cramer has recommended this stock because it has become a “serial raise of its distribution.” It yields 7.2 percent and could yield 9 percent next year, even if the stock stays at the same price.
• ONEOK : He likes this natural gas distributor.

Other names on the list include speculative pharmaceutical stocks, and two growth names—Papa Johns and Panera Bread. Cramer doesn’t recommend high growth stocks in this environment and Panera fits that bill. But Papa Johns is a good name, although he prefers Domino’s Pizza .

“I know you want to own the stocks that gained the most today,” Cramer said. “Me? I would rather have the consistent warmth of a comforter, than the turbo charge of an electric blanket, which the Europeans keep pouring cold water on.”

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