Cramer's 2007 Picks Vs. The Markets To-Date (AAPL, NYX, CSCO, HAL, GS, MO, SVNT, RAD, LVLT)

Some people love Jim Cramer, and some people just love to bash him.  Some try to run percentage gains that he would be up or down at any given moment.  Some revere him, and some love to show where his picks underperform on a broad market.  So what we decided to do was see how the TOP 9 CRAMER PICKS FOR 2007 performed versus the overall stock market.

We took issue with the last Barron’s article that was noting an underperformance.  James Altucher of TheStreet.com also took issue with a measurement of Cramer picks as well.  What investors around the block and in all walks need to consider is that once again these issues aren’t really relevant.  Some people make many following Cramer and some people have made money shorting some of his picks.  The truth is that unless you had a black box trading program that traded and tracks every single pick of his and that followed an exact set of rules, then this is just for conversation.  It is really impossible to make calculations when you consider all of the caveats and that all entry points are rough guestimates or theoretical based on a snapshot.

So what we decided to do was run CRAMER’S TOP 9 PICKS FOR 2007 where Cramer made these picks for the entire year.  These are based upon a snapshot in time with all equal dates of DEC 29, 2007 even though he made the picks in the days right after the 2007 start.  We have also outlined what Cramer said about each one of these picks (hyperlink on names) at the start of the year so you can compare the world of early-January to today.  Here is how the Cramer picks did, but keep in mind this excludes dividends and other restructure payouts:

Cramer’s 2007 Picks Versus The Markets               

Speculative Picks:        DEC-31   SEP-04    Up/Down   Percent

• Level 3     LVLT    $5.60        $5.31     ($0.29)     -5.17%
• Rite Aid    RAD     $5.44        $5.11     ($0.33)     -6.06%
• Savient    SVNT    $11.21     $13.35     $2.14     19.09%

Growth Picks:                  DEC-31   SEP-04   Up/Down  Percent               

• NYSE        NYX     $96.88    $73.84    ($23.04)    -23.78%
• Apple        AAPL   $84.84    $144.16   $59.32      69.89%
• Cisco      CSCO   $27.33    $32.32     $4.99        18.25%

Value Picks:                               DEC-31   SEP-04    Up/Down    Percent            

• Altria                      MO    $63.14     $69.67     $6.53      10.34%
• Goldman Sachs GS    $198.34   $180.80  ($17.54)  -8.84%
• Halliburton         HAL    $30.81     $34.99     $4.18      13.56%   

THE MARKETS:        DEC-31       SEP-04        GAIN   Percent

• DJIA             12,463.15   13,448.86     985.71    7.90%
• NASDAQ       2,415.29     2,630.24      214.95    8.89%
• S&P500        1,418.30     1,489.42       71.12      5.01%

Out of the Cramer Picks for 2007, 5 of the 9 picks landed in positive territory as of the close.  The results are skewed a bit because of the huge performance of Apple (AAPL). But we decided to smooth that out too. On a simple basis and excluding dividends, it looks like the Cramer portfolio has an average of 9.68% return year to date (once again, this excludes dividends).  If you remove Apple’s huge gains, you get a 2.17% gain (outside of dividends) and if you use the ‘remove best and worst single choices’ which also kicks out the large drop in NYSE (NYX) shares then you get a gain of 5.88% (outside of dividends).

The truth is that numbers can be manipulated because they are based upon a snapshot in time and many models do not adequately account for restructuring, splits, spin-offs, and reorganizations.  This is at least a start now that we are 2/3 of the way through 2007. 

Jon C. Ogg
September 4, 2007

If these didn’t align properly it was because of a formatting issue, and we apologize for any misaligned numbers.