by Abigail Stevenson
Media stocks have been leading the charge higher since February, with the group up 13 percent on average. Considering that just last year the entire media cohort was in free-fall over television subscriber worries, Jim Cramer found this remarkable.
“Clearly this whole group is back in vogue on the Wall Street fashion show after spending some time in the wilderness,” the “Mad Money” host said.
To gain further insight on where media stocks like Disney, CBS, Time Warner and Comcast could be headed, Cramer turned to Bob Lang to look at the charts. Lang is a technician, founder of ExplosiveOptions.net and colleague of Cramer’s at RealMoney.com.
Disney helped to precipitate the decline in media stocks in August 2015 when it reported a quarter that had a weaker than expected ESPN forecast. Lang found that after the bottom in February, Disney has mostly traded sideways, creating a springboard base.
The stock finally broke out on Monday and took out its critical level of $100. Lang also saw that the Chaikin money flow oscillator, which measures buying and selling pressure, just went positive. That suggested to him that big institutional money managers have started to accumulate the stock, which is good news.
As for Cramer, he called Disney’s CEO Bob Iger a “magician” and expects big things over time. “I like the Iger money flow and the Iger convergence divergence, so that makes me pretty positive on the company, not just the stock,” Cramer said.
The daily chart of CBS showed a very different picture. While Disney has created a base over the past few months, CBS bottomed in February and then began to rally in virtually a straight line through late March. Since then, the stock has taken a break and has built a base at a higher level, which Lang interpreted as a sign that it could have more room to run.
Lang added that after trading sideways for a little longer, he expects CBS to begin rallying again to new highs.
Ultimately, Lang interpreted the charts to suggest that Disney, CBS, Time Warner, and Comcast all have more room to run. And if Cramer had to pick his top player, he would go with Disney based on both the technical and the fundamentals.
