Monday, January 29, 2007

Jim Cramer says "tomato", we say "tomato".

If you've watched Jim Cramer on CNBC's MadMoney show, you probably have already come to realize that the man has some form of Investing Attention Deficit Disorder. One week he loves a particular theme, a month later he hates it. Appropriately, his nickname is "The Reverend Jim of the Church of What's Working Now". And that is what I believe Jim Cramer is best watched for, to get a view of where the main focus on Wall Street is right at the moment.

In this interview, he says he doesn't subscribe to peak oil theory, but that the cheap, easy to get oil is gone and we will have to pay higher prices for oil going forward for what's left, which is in difficult, hard to find places. I can't tell exactly from this interview if Jim does not believe that there will be a peak at some point and then a downtrend in global production due to depletion, or if he just thinks that point is still a long way off. It seems to be the later.

[That's okay Jim. That's how it starts. You'll get there.]

His stocks picks here run along the lines of service companies that help find and retrieve oil from far off or deep places (think Transocean/RIG), while he does not embrace stocks with high fixed costs like the Canadian tar sands producers, coal, etc.

I disagree with Jim there, because the Canadian tar sands producers will do well in the higher priced oil environment he envisions, where they can enjoy high prices without the risks of needing to find the oil, develop the infrastructure to extract and transport it, negotiate with sometimes hostile foreign governments etc.

TheStreet.com TV: Jim Cramer on Peak Oil.

Quotes:

"We're not running out of oil at all. We're just running out of oil that is easy to find and easy to get at. There are vast reservoirs, vast, far more than we need for multiple years. It's just not where we want it. So I don't subscribe to Peak Oil theory. What I do subscribe to is the cost of oil is going to be so much higher that the cost of oil is never going to come back below $40 ever again."