In a market obsessed with passive money, traders just can't seem to get it right with Kohl's Corp. (KSS) and Nordstrom Inc. (JWN) , said Jim Cramer on the June Action Alerts PLUS members' call.
For Nordstrom, Wall Street started misfiring when the retailer reported a sub-par quarter that made it feel "more like J.C. Penney Co. (JCP) than Macy's Inc. (M) ," Cramer said. The stock cratered to $45 from nearly $51 in one session last month, said Cramer, who is the founder of TheStreet and the portfolio manager for AAP..
"That made no sense to me and I was unwilling to accept the vaunted market's judgment. The company had a rare, and admitted, failure to execute and that caused the problem," Cramer said. "At $45 people panicked. We did not want to panic and, instead, we bought their panic," Cramer continued. "It worked."
"We chose to reject the market's overly severe decree based on one quarter's sub-optimal execution and, in retrospect, that was the right thing to do," he said.
As for Kohl's, Cramer said the market's perception was "very strange." About 16.5% of Kohl's stock is held in a short position.
"But the company has had the best same store sales numbers of the department stores, it has the best balance sheet in the group, it has never had to close a store and it has a solid yield backed up by plenty of cash," Cramer said.
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