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Gold/Mining/Energy : Strictly: Drilling and oil-field services -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RGinPG who wrote (13061)	2/27/1998 9:04:00 AM
From: Teddy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 95453

We still have Cramer on our side. Jim dude, when are you going to start posting here? (BTW, do you mind if i post your copywrite stories?) From thestreet.com (sign up for two weeks weeks, its worth it) Cramer on the Oil Industry Merger By James J. Cramer 2/27/98 8:10 AM ET Just when the shorts in the oil patch thought they could print money they get whacked upside the head by the Halliburton-Dresser. Wow, that's an awesome amount of pain dealt to those short-sellers who have had the free ride of their lives since October. The drilling group has been one long nauseating gauntlet for months now. In past times when oil has gone down, the owners of these companies have just battened down the hatches and watched their net worth slide with Brent crude. But not this time. This merger is significant for one main reason: Dresser is a proud company that has always liked to go it alone. When it does partnerships, it likes them joint-venture style. Stock prices have come down so far, though, that Dresser felt motivated to bring out some value here. I think Dresser management felt compelled to get the stock higher. I have suffered with this group for many months now, paring it back as the tide against crude turned, trying hard to keep some exposure, but not so much that I hurt my fund. One of the main reasons why I kept some exposure was because the companies insisted to me that they would do what is necessary to preserve value. That this time it is different. They argued that just because crude dropped, that didn't mean shareholders should have to sell. That reasoning has been costly, until yesterday. I'm betting there are more mergers to come. Do you return to the group aggressively? Watch today's action and the action on Monday. If the stocks slink back to where they were before this, I will look for more merger candidates. If Merrill Lynch, which cut numbers drastically for the group yesterday, is right, the only game in town for this group will be the merger game. But if the stocks continue to rocket today and early next week, maybe the long awaited base is upon us. I would love to know the answer, but the stocks have to tell us first. Believe me, it is more fun to have stocks go up because of number bumps and day rates, but it is nice to see that these stocks can go up at all. And it felt great to see the shorts scramble for a session.