The stocks to buy when the smoke clears
The market was hammered for a second straight day on Wednesday, becoming a battlefield shrouded in smoke. Yet, Jim Cramer suspects that the market is just waiting on any piece of good news to catapult higher Thursday.
What makes the "Mad Money" host think it will head higher? Because of the way that random stocks are reacting to news lately, and the way that other stocks associated to them are also reacting.
"Let me give you some real life battlefield commentary, right from the trenches, so you know why I think the bias is to the upside here, even as the bears seemed to take the day," he added.
For instance, there was the eclectic furniture maker Wayfair. It came public in October at $29 and immediately ran up to $37. The stock was sliced in half in December when frustrated investors wanted to know why it wasn't doing better right away.
Then on Wednesday it reported a monstrous 55 percent growth, and the stock shot through the roof, jumping 13 percent in one day.
But it was the pin action that impressed Cramer the most. Based on this fabulous news, Restoration Hardware also picked up gains on Wednesday just because of the fact that both Restoration and Wayfair are both catalog retailers of home goods. That cannot be ignored.
Or how about McDonald's? This stock has been a rocket ship headed higher ever since its former CEO was ousted. The market brought the stock even higher after research was released indicated a promising future for McDonald's.
On top of that, the stock just wouldn't quit when McDonald's released a story saying that it will phase out serving chickens that have been treated by antibiotics.
"Put aside that I didn't know they were pumping their chickens full of antibiotics to begin with, so the sigh of relief over here is a little muted. I still figured, once again, it's time to buy Hain Celestial and WhiteWave…sure enough, they roared ahead," Cramer said.
Whole Foods, which had been resting after a huge run, also woke up and went even higher. Cramer even thinks it could be a good time to gobble up some Chipotle as well.
The last group that showed Cramer pin action was pharmaceuticals. Bristol-Myers was up 6 percent after receiving FDA approval for the expanded use of its lung cancer drug. Sure enough, various other big pharma stocks went even higher.
In fact, Cramer suspects that February was more of an economically weak month than most believe. But he won't wait for the numbers to come out to take action. The move in pharma could be a reaction to this suspected weakness, as historically they have fared well in economic weakness.
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"I'm not sugar coating the battlefield reports. Investors may have won these skirmishes, and yet still lost the battle for the session," he added.
However, on a day like Wednesday Cramer always leans back to his three-day mentality. Wait until the third day of the battlefield before buying. So as the smoke clears on Thursday, that is the time to start doing some buying for the stocks that could survive on Wednesday. Those will be the ones to do better the next day.
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