Cramer Tours Kremlin & Politburo (MTL, WBD, CTCM, SEDC, CETV, TRF, RSX)

This week on CNBC’s MAD MONEY, Jim Cramer highlighted how Russia has many very promising prospects for emerging markets investors.  He gave many ways to play the country with ADR’s of public Russian companies that trade in the U.S.  We only wanted to run a single summary since this was his fixed series going all week. Here were his picks this week for Russia:

• Cramer’s Russian pick from Monday was in metals and mining pick of Mechel (NYSE: MTL) for steel demand being driven in Russia, China, and the Middle East.
• On Tuesday, Cramer picked Russian food producing giant Wimm-Bill-DANN (NYSE: WBD) with more than 30%of Russian dairy and as the number 2 and number 3 producer of baby foods and juice products.
• Cramer’s pick on Wednesday, he gave his top pick that night as CTC Media (NASDAQ: CTCM), the fourth largest television broadcaster in Russia with 42 television stations and 30% longterm growth.
• On Thursday, Cramer picked Central European Distribution (NASDAQ: CEDC) as a vodka and liquor distributor in Russia and Eastern Europe.
• Friday’s Cramer pick from Russia was Central European Media Enterprises Ltd. (NASDAQ: CETV), which invests in, develops, and operates national commercial television channels and stations in Central and Eastern Europe.

As far as going abroad, you’ve always heard 247WallSt.com talk about ETF’s and Closed-End funds as trading vehicles that offer significant upside without as much individual portfolio risk due to a single company.  The longest running fund we used for investing in Russia is the Templeton Russia and East European Fund Inc. (NYSE: TRF) and the Market Vectors Russia ETF (NYSE: RSX).

If you have followed Cramer, he’s given many similar country category picks over the course of a week, particularly in BRIC countries.  As far as another BRIC series Cramer has run for Brazil, Russia, India, and China:

• Here were his top Brazil picks.
• Here were his top 5 China picks.
• One time he did BRIC+ME, from BRIC plus the Middle East.

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Jon C. Ogg
April 11, 2008

Jon Ogg produces the Special Situation Investing Newsletter.  He can be reached at [email protected] and he does not own securities in the companies he covers.