We reviewed our different portfolios of key stocks to see which ones performed the best today, and it wasn’t just the financials as a general class.  At the end of the day, Jim Cramer’s old list of stocks from his "Mortgage Madness Portfolio" took the cake. 

This is the list: MGIC Investment (MTG), Countrywide (CFC), Bear Stearns (BSC), KB Home (KBH), Centex (CTX), Citigroup (C), Goldman Sachs (GS), Blackstone (BX), MBIA (MBI), Thornburg (TMA), Beazer (BZH), and Washington Mutual (WM).

We ran the screen right before the close, but take a look at how this portfolio did after the 50/50 dual rate cut from the FOMC today (Ticker; Price; Changes ($,%); 52-week range):

MTG $33.55 +$2.75  (+8.93%) $21.00-70.10
CFC $19.91 +$0.64  (+3.32%) $15.00-45.26
BSC $119.87 +$4.49 (+3.89%) $99.75-$172.61
KBH $29.27 +$1.15 (+4.09%)  $25.95-$56.08
CTX $29.22 +$1.38 (+4.96%)  $25.59-58.42
C   $48.33 +$2.30 (+5.00%)  $44.66-57.00
GS  $200.53 +$12.92 (+6.89%) $157.38 – 233.97
BX  $24.36 +$0.71 (+3.01%)  $21.30 – 38.00
MBI $61.95 +$4.47 (+7.78%)  $48.95 – 76.02
TMA $13.50 +$0.30 (+2.27%)  $7.49 – 28.40
BZH $11.37 +$1.90 (20.06%)  $8.10 – 48.60
WM  $37.70 +$1.74 (4.84%)   $31.27 – 46.38

If you added in Hovnanian (HOV) for it saving itself with a homebuilder firesale last weekend and add in Lehman  Brothers(LEH) because of its better than expected (and far less bad) earnings from this morning, then this entire portfolio would be the hottest smoking portfolio.

This blew past the tech stocks from Cramer’s old "NEW FOUR HORSEMEN OF TECH" and it blew well past our list of defensive stocks we gave for crummy markets.

Jon C. Ogg
September 18, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.

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