Time may be a construct, but it’s also a big learning lesson for Nasdaq Investors.
That after Jim Cramer’s “sorry, not sorry” assessment of the big Nasdaq winners after the second quarter of 2021. Turns out, those winners didn’t include short-sighted investors who overlooked the quarter’s top performers – many of whom were bypassed as they weren’t viewed as “reopening stocks.”
This from Cramer:
“If you had to pin down what made for big winners in the second quarter of the Nasdaq derby it would be the surprising advance of businesses that should have fallen off with the Great Reopening. The companies that performed the best were, typically, those you would have thought would have been the worst, the ones that year over year would sputter as comparisons got tougher.”
But that would both be a misperception — these aren’t pantry-stocker companies — and an understating of management’s ability to take advantage of the moment and expand beyond whatever thought possible. Put simply, these companies were counted out way too early in the post-pandemic environment and the sellers are experiencing some real regret.”
Read more on Real Money: Jim Cramer: Nasdaq’s Big Second-Quarter Winners Were Written Off Too Soon
First up is a 2021 supernova – Moderna (MRNA) – Get Report.
Moderna was dismissed as a bioscience firm whose shining star had dimmed in the first half of 2021, as vaccines sputtered out. But with the Delta variant making headlines in June and a widespread view of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine as the superior choice, MRNA stock took off in the second quarter — up 79%.
Cramer also sees profits in a COVID climate that most thought had disappeared in the rear-view mirror. Not so fast, global governments say.
“Until recently analysts were predicting $25 billion in revenues in 2021 dropping to $18 billion in 2022, but the 2022 number’s been on the increase as the disease seems to be less under control than we thought at the beginning of the quarter. The EU, for example, just added 150 million more doses than its original order and the United States tacked on 200 million more. Plus Moderna expects to sell a huge number of doses to India and perhaps millions more to teenage Americans.”
Next up is DocuSign (DOCU) – Get Report, which rolls forward even as millions of remote workers have returned to the office, and as pandemic business technology favorites like Zoom Video (ZM) – Get Report seem to be fading into the background, according to Cramer.
Another unexpected post-pandemic favorite is Idexx Labs (IDXX) – Get Report, a diagnostics company that caters to household pets – and to many first-time pandemic-related pet owners.
With pet adoption trends on the rise (23 million Americans said they acquired a pet during the pandemic, the ASPA reports), pet stocks are yet another overlooked sector in a post-COVID world.
It’s a world that many investors didn’t see coming in the second quarter of 2021 – but one we’re living in, anyway.