Far be for me to say what should or shouldn't get investors excited, but has the market gone coffee stock crazy? Seriously. Don't get me wrong - I'm the king of obscure (maybe even bizarre) stocks, but I'm having a real hard time wrapping my head around this incredible rally. Coffee Holding Co. (Nasdaq: JVA), Caribou Coffee (Nasdaq: CBOU), Starbucks (Nasdaq: SBUX), Green Mountain Coffee Roaster (Nasdaq: GMCR), and all the rest have popped anywhere from 20% to 100% over the past three weeks, and I've got that nagging feeling this is all gonna' come unraveled a lot faster than it developed. That's the nice way of saying I see a big correction coming, and soon. Back to the Beginning The roots of this ridiculous rally actually go back to March, when Starbucks and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters announced an intent to partner up in the single-serve coffee market. Green Mountain's at-home brewing 'Keurig' machine - and the so-called 'K cup' single serving packet that the machines use - is yet-another venue for Starbucks. Then just a few days after that, Starbucks expressed interest in buying smaller competitor Peet's Coffee & Tea (Nasdaq: PEET), which would actually give Starbucks a big toehold in the grocery business. [Starbucks pretty much already has the winning coffee shop formula down to a science.] Buoyed by a runup in coffee bean prices, backed up by a $400 IPO filing from Dunkin Donuts in the meantime, and underscored by a couple of upside surprises from other coffee companies, that was all the rally needed to take on a life of its own. Since May, these stocks have been going higher just because they're going higher (seriously). The group's up 31.4% in just the last month. If it were the biotech sector after the swine flu epidemic broke out, that would be one thing. This isn't biotech though - it's coffee. I've just got a feeling we're seeing the grand finale unfolding right now though... prompted by none other than Jim Cramer himself. End of the Line? Don't know if you watch his 'Mad Money' show or not, but last Wednesday - the 29th - Jim Cramer touted the bull market in coffee, and suggested that the upcoming Dunkin Donuts IPO would only draw more interest in the group. He was especially hot on GMCR and SBUX, but not so much on CBOU, saying it was too expensive. (Never mind the fact that GMCR is trading at a higher trailing as well as projected P/E than CBOU.) The group's up 6.3% since the show, with 2.7% of that gain coming Tuesday. So why am so anti-coffee now? It's not that I have a problem with the companies. I'm just reminded of so many flash in the pan rallies that seemed so bulletproof AT THE TIME, but ended up fizzling on a long-term basis. Case(s) in Point Silver. Remember the wild ride the iShares Silver Trust Fund (NYSE:SLV) took us on between late January and late February, gaining 85% in that three month period? Check out these quotes from Coeur d'Alene Mines' (NYSE:CDE) - a huge silver miner - CEO Dennis Wheeler from and Frank McGhee (head dealer at Integrated Brokerage Services) in an April 28th interview... "We're in a legitimate market driven by financial interest in silver and strong industrial demand...Supplies are relatively inelastic." (Wheeler) "There is no manipulation going on in this market....it does not take a lot to stop the market until this market decides to go. I'd like to categorize silver as a freight train... high prices are not a short-term phenomenon." (McGhee) Unbelievable. April 28th was THE peak. The fund has fallen 28% since then, and not even hinted at a rebound. Silver (the commodity) prices have fallen about the same amount, and have been equally unable to recover. What happened to the 'freight train' and 'strong demand'? Coal. After the March 12th tsunami in Japan, and subsequent meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, coal stocks just went nuts as the world was certain nuclear power was going away forever. A Morningstar article from March 25th went as far to say... "Coal Will Benefit from Japan's Nuclear Near Miss...we expect the nuclear disaster to prompt existing coal plants to run harder and new plants to be built, especially in the emerging world." The Market Vectors Coal ETF (NYSE: KOL) rallied from March 15th to April 4th, sucking newcomers in the whole time. Since April 4th though, the average coal stock is down 6%, and had been down as much as 8%. The coal stock pullback started before the market's did, and the group has underperformed the broad market the whole time. Coal prices really haven't budged either. In both cases, the pros were 'certain'... they were just wrong. And in both cases, the pros were falling in line with the overt trend at the time. Sound familiar? Your Next Move I'm not going to flat out tell you to sell any coffee holdings you may have into this strength, for a couple of reasons. The big one is simply that you never want to underestimate the market's ability to defy logic and reason - these overbought stocks may well go higher. I can tell you that the pros are salivating about being able to sell what you're willing to buy at these prices though, as these stocks are averaging a pretty lofty trailing P/E of 28. The forward-looking P/E measures are about the same, and there's no amount of feasible 'earnings beat' that could bring that projected valuation down to something a little more palatable for a coffee company. (It's a valuation that flies when euphoria is on steroids.... not so much when the dust settles after the kind of stampede we've just seen.) And, I can also say that if I had any of these stocks to take profits on, I'd be selling into the strength too. I've just seen too may of these 'gotta have it' rallies top out right about the time everyone (including the media) seems to be singing the same bullish tune... like now. It was a fun ride while it lasted though.