Mad Money’s Meds for This Bi-Polar Market

Mad Money’s Meds for This Bi-Polar Marke

 

Published: Wednesday, 5 May 2010 | 7:04 PM

By: Tom Brennan
Web Editor, Mad Money

Investors suffered a “vicious roller coaster” of a market on Wednesday, Cramer said during tonight’s show. The Dow dropped 102 points only to rally 130 and then plummet right back down, before closing 60 points in the red. And the S&P followed a similarly wild trajectory. The way to survive that volatility is to not trade the moves at all.

“We’ve got a ton of short-term activity that’s too hard to game,” Cramer said.

He recommended instead that investors look for “uniquely domestic” companies or those with strong secular growth that plays to Europe’s weaknesses. Basically, go for the boring names that do well when people are terrified of an economic slowdown.

For example, governments across the globe are fighting to contain medicals costs, so Cramer thinks they’ll encourage generic drugs, especially in Europe. That’s good news for Teva Pharmaceuticals [TEVA  Loading...      ()   ].

The same thing goes for housing. Cramer fave Weyerhaeuser [WY  Loading...      ()   ] isn’t worried about the euro. The only two drivers for this stock, he said, are the company’s conversion into a real estate investment trust and Cramer’s predicted housing shortage by the end of 2011.

Food stocks like General Mills [GIS  Loading...      ()   ] and McDonald’s [MCD  Loading...      ()   ] work, too, even if MCD does have some European exposure. So do American energy companies with big Marcellus shale holdings like Atlas Energy [ATLS  Loading...      ()   ], National Fuel Gas [NFG  Loading...      ()   ] or Devon Energy [DVN  Loading...      ()   ]. And then there are retail plays like Costco, Steve Madden or Nike.

Don’t forget about tech companies and their secular growth themes, such as the mobile Internet. Cramer likes Apple [AAPL  Loading...      ()   ], Salesforce.com [CRM  Loading...      ()   ] and EMC [EMC  Loading...      ()   ] in this space. Plus, “turbo-charged growth stories” like Netflix [NFLX  Loading...      ()   ] and Chipotle [CMG  Loading...      ()   ] warrant a look, too.

Cramer’s bottom line is this: Investors don’t need to constantly obsess about Europe’s debt problems. They’re better off using these declines to buy stocks with great long-term secular growth stores or those that just delivered the best earnings beats of the season.

Because “until Europe resolves itself, however it resolves itself,” Cramer said, “we want boring.”

Cramer’s charitable trust owns Apple, Costco, EMC, McDonald’s, Teva Pharmaceuticals and Weyerhaeuser.