The market has had a monster run since the middle of February, but Jim Cramer finds that stocks are still incredibly undervalued.
There could be tons of reasons why the market moved up such as the Fed on hold or relief of stress in the oil patch. But in Cramer's opinion, these reasons only expose that there are thousands of stocks with different prospects and different valuations.
"I think that a lot of this move has to do with the fortunes of individual companies, and how much more their stocks may be worth than where they are currently valued," the "Mad Money" host said.
Starwood is the hotel chain with 1,300 properties around the globe. It was only a few months ago that Marriott bid for $11 billion for Starwood. Cramer was astonished that the company would sell for so little, but the board was under pressure from short-sighted activists who were in position to demand a sale.
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Then Chinese company Anbang Insurance Group swooped in with a higher bid, topping the Marriott bid by as much as $2 billion. On Monday morning, Marriott came back with a $13.6 billion offer, making the deal at $2.6 billion more than Marriott's first offer. And if Marriott were overpaying, the stock would get hammered — but it was barely down on Monday.
"To me it says that Starwood should never have been so low to begin with. That the stock market was just wrong," Cramer said.
Another example was Caterpillar. The company preannounced last week that its numbers were far below Wall Street's expectations. And while it kept yearly earnings intact, it made it clear that the current business is running well below plan. After a short decline, the stock took off and has been up ever since. Some may think this was a technical run because there were so many people short the stock.
"What if we just said that CAT should never have been as low as it was," Cramer said.
And the undervaluation isn't just limited to Starwood and Caterpillar. Cramer added that he thinks American Airlines, Disney, Wal-Mart and McDonald's all didn't deserve to be as low as they were.
Why can't investors see this?
"I think it gets obscured by the bigger backdrop of the Fed and the presidential race and the weakness of the rest of the world. At any given time, we have had a rolling bear market in so many different sectors," Cramer said.
So, when the smoke clears from the bigger picture, Cramer thinks the market will finally see individual companies for what they are really worth — companies worth more than what they are currently selling for.
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