Ignore Europe and focus on earnings
In this market, it's best to watch where the good and bad results will come from.
A rally led by housing and fertilizer and oil is not a rally that can have all that much staying power.
But, then again, maybe it wasn't much of a rally. Maybe it was a repositioning out of growth winners into oversold losers and domestic stocks with some good news, like Lennar (LEN) and its cohort.
In other words, it wasn't built to last -- and it looks like it isn't lasting.
In its place is the linkage once again. I'm talking about the linkage between a weak euro and a bad European financial situation with JPMorgan Chase (JPM), which is supposed to be a good financial name.
When it hits you in the face that the loss can't be quantified, it's a reminder of Moody's bank downgrades. It's a reminder of the division between banks that bank and banks that trade, and how the trading banks are still very much at risk from the imploding European situation.
Together with the number of cuts we are getting from banks, and the linkage, is a recognition that the market should have gone down Wednesday, not up. This is the second time in three weeks that the market was just wrong and delayed in its analysis, with the first time having been the reaction to the Fed's inaction.
It's funny, though. If you had a big cash position, Wednesday was as painful as it was because the S&P 500 ($INX) underwent a pretty big move. For Thursday, that cash position could save you. There are just too many days like this these, when the U.S. market is Europe on, Europe off.
It's best just to think about which sectors will report good earnings and which won't -- banks, tech and oil won't -- and leave it at that.
Jim Cramer is a co-founder of TheStreet and contributes daily market commentary to the financial news network's sites. Follow his trades for Action Alerts PLUS, which Cramer co-manages as a charitable trust and is long JPM.
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