Wednesday, 07/23/08
Posted 07/23/08,  11:03 pm ET

(Scroll down to see Jim's comments below)

 
 
Today's date:  Wednesday, 07/23/08

  Dow Jones: 11,632   + 29
  NASDAQ:   2,325   + 21
  S&P 500:   1,282    + 5
 
 
 
 
 
First Segment
   
Opening Segment 1 Title: 'Imagination at Work'

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Featured Stock(s):

General Electric (GE)

See GE's official website here.
See the Yahoo! Finance profile for GE here.


See Opening Segment 2, below...

 
After this segment, you can see Jim's Lightning Round picks here...

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JJC:    So I'm sitting around over the weekend, reading this weeks' BusinessWeek, and I come across this hugely bearish article about my boss' boss' boss, Jeff Immelt, I may have been missing a boss there... The CEO of General Electric (GE), which owns this network, and I came to this paragraph... I'm going to read it verbatum, because it got me thinking real hard... Quote: "Even with the disposal of insurance, the reality is that GE remains a company that's far more exposed to financial services than many investors would like."

Back in 2001, when GE Capital made up to 40% of the company's net income, the argument continues, Sherin said he wouldn't want that ratio to go above 45%, at least for a few years. Now those businesses are roughly half the net, financial services, scary... I put the magazine down... I said, there you go, that's it... Ah, hah, that's why GE is being punished... It's a hidden financial... Sure enough, in the time that it took to write the article, presumably early last week, through today, we have seen almost all of the financials going from this to this... From sell, sell, sell, to buy, buy, buy... 50%, 60%, 70% up... And in some cases, Wachovia 100% up... Far worse companies than GE when it comes to balance sheet or lending... And at the same time, GE, it's done next to nothing... Despite it being, according to BusinessWeek, far more exposed to financial services than many investors would like...

Now, wait a minute... It's illogical Mr. Spock... You can't be darned if you do and darned if you don't... If you die by the financial sword, you should live by the financial sword... I say live long and prosper, buy some GE... Bussiness people want to point out that GE lost a billion dollars, whoa, a billion dollars, in subprime from WMC mortgage before selling it last year... Horrors, a billion... Hey, come on... The vast majority of banks would have killed to lose that little, killed... And it got rid of it almost a year ago... And do you think you could sell WMC mortgage now or any other subprime unit?... You'd have to pay another company to take it off your hands...

As one analyst covering GE's actually and truly better than expected second quarter wrote last week, here's one... Talking about darting with faint praise, there is a pervasive "lack" of bad news... GE beat the estimates for heavens sake... Can you name me one financial that didn't have a gigantic shortfall relative to expectations set just three months ago... All of the others were drastically reduced, and the only other answer is GE... For all of the others, we're thrilled, absolutely thrilled if they only lost $6 billion, instead of $8 billion... GE, again, made money... $5.4 billion for the quarter, to be precise... It's planning to sell its weakest business to consumer and industrial segment, we spun off the share holders next year...

So the worst area will be gone...

That leaves GE with some really strong businesses... Like infrastructure, other infra plays during this whole period are up huge... How about the year over year FLR, up 36%... JEC up 24%... ABB, really comperable, up 17%... GE is down 28%... Not logical... GE is also the biggest wind player... We don't talk about it because it's such a small part of the business, but it's the biggest and would otherwise be in our "WindEx"...

How about healthcare?...

We love healthcare stocks on Mad Money... We're supposed to hate GE because it has a healthcare business?... While everyone else is stuck in poorly performing consumer finance businesses, GE is dumping theirs at what I think is going to be a great price... I think the remaining GE will dominate all the rest of lease finance... It's competitors like CIT are being left in the dust... And it has what it appears to be a fortress of a balance sheet... Yeah, I should have included it in the fortress four banks, making them the fortress five, as GE's balance sheet looks better than WFC's, JPM's, BAC's and USB's... Those guys look like the Ford and DMV in food compared to GE... The only other financial name that hasn't moved is Washington Mutual... And that's run by General Custer... I mean, that's run by General Kerry Killinger, a true Mad Money Wall of Shamer, if there ever were one... GE is the center rower, you know we like these with 50% of sales from international, merging markets, rose 20% for the second quarter, but it seems like nobody cares...

Actually this is one of those chances that for each of the positives I mention, you're supposed to go "nobody cares"... With a 4.5% yield among the highest in the Dow Jones average and repeat after me, nobody cares... After taxes, even after Obama's taxes, I think you have a winner...

Here's the most important part...

People better start caring because if the market won't take GE up, the Shaichs will do it... At the exact bottom in the 1990 bank stock cataclysim, a Saudi Prince nobody had ever heard of, bought a huge chunk of the then lowed and despised CitiGroup... That marked the beginning of one of the greatest runs I've ever seen in my life... Now GE is making a huge deal with the Avudabi state owned, Mubadala development company... My prediction... Just like we all know now who Prince Alaweed is, we'll remember the name Mubadala after GE recovers... This company wants to be one of the top ten share holders in GE... You know how you get that?... You gotta buy a minimum of 125 million shares... That's $3.4 billino dollars worth... At these prices, well, I don't know how it stays here... Mubadala will be there every day buying... It's like there's a second buy back to GE... For all wee know, Mubadal development could become the biggest shareholder... Who knows what kind of firepower this sovereign company has?... Back in 1990 when Prince Alaweed bough his big stake in Citigruop, nobody knew who the heck he was... Yesterday most people said, who the heck is Mubadala?... I don't want to be as glib as I was in 1990, when I shouted to Karen Cramer, then my trading partner, who is this clown prince, when it hit hthe tape?... Well, the answer was, the crown prince, was the man who called the bottom, something I didn't realize until the stock rallied 25%... We got this news yesterday and everyone yawned, who is this Mubadala?... I'm saying Yabba Dabba to Mubadala, as in Yabba Dabba Doo...

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The Bottom Line!:     General Electric (GE) got taken down along with the financials because it's largely one of them... But it hasn't rallied with the rest of the group, even though it's the real fort Knox to those zinderknuffs, which, as much as I love the movie Bow Jest, was in the end, over run... I think this investment by Abu Dabi's Mubadala development will be what puts in the bottom, and starts sending these shares, back, back up where they belong... And until then, GE is paying 4.5% dividend yield to wait... Hmm, I can't believe I said all this about the company I work for... But now I'm darn glad I did.

 

   
 

Stock Snapshots - Includes all stocks mentioned above

 

 

Jim
Cramer's
rating on
this stock

STOCK
SYMBOL

Closing
price
that
day

Opening
price
next
day

Full Company Name/Comments
(see comments above for each)


GE

29.33

na

General Electric (GE)

 

 



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Second Segment
 
Opening Segment 2 Title: 'CEO Interview'

Ronald M. Shaich, CEO

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