Time to clear the 'hopium' smoke
Companies are busy defending their outlooks to a market that expects the worst. That's bullish, not bearish.
No offense. All defense. That's what every day feels like these days. "So-and-so is out defending Boeing (BA) against stories of slowing orders." "Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY) defended on Amazon (AMZN) competition." "McDonald's (MCD) defended on slowing Asia." "Starbucks (SBUX) defended on slowing Europe." "Harman (HAR) defended on Apple's (AAPL) Siri incursion into autos." "Nike (NKE) defended on possibly faltering Asian sales."
I find this kind of research to be reflective of how negative everything has become. These aren't upgrades. They aren't new, positive catalysts. They are simply attempts to try to defend a decline that may or may not be warranted.
Some of these defenses have to be made, simply because analysts were already recommending the stock and they feel they have to say something.
But the more insidious are literally defenses against charges that are simply bogus or that really can't be refuted by the parties right now.
The worst of these is the Harman attack. Here you have a company that's embedded in a lot of high-end luxury cars with a sound and gadget solution that customers seem to love. At the Apple developers app conference, we heard chatter that Apple wants Siri built into cars. So the presumption immediately was that Apple was going to upend the business and take share away from Harman. Morgan Stanley led this assault with a report that directly said Harman's car franchise, its most important one, would be under Apple assault.
Dinesh Paliwal, the CEO of Harman, immediately came on "Mad Money" and tried to refute this negative story as best he could. Here's the issue, though: Apple doesn't talk about suppliers, and Harman risked its relationship with Apple, which includes an Apple collaboration for BMW, by addressing the fracas.
No wonder the stock got hammered.
We are in a moment when all you have to do is mention business in Europe for any company that does business there. We are also in a quiet period when many companies can't address those worries. And we have no company being able to talk directly about its own Apple biz.
I know there are tons of people who call this period one in which traders and investors are smoking "hopium."
I couldn't disagree more. I think this is a horribly negative moment in which we presume that everything is falling apart.
The defense usually falls on deaf ears. No matter what you may think of the Greek election, remember that there is more negativity than I have seen in ages.
That's bullish, not bearish.

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 AAPL, BA and MCD.
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"That's bullish, not bearish."
Gee, Jim, what exactly aren't you and your cronies bullish on? Slowdown in China? Pending panic kicked off by PIIGS? Land bubble in Midwest built on ridiculous corn prices built on ridiculous ethanol subsidies? Maybe I'm just too gloom and doom, but give me Fleckenstein any day.
First of all, Cramer is an idiot. Among the insane comments he has made, my favorite came in 2006 when Cramer said "if every loan in 2006 that was subprime blew up…we would still not notice." Secondly, in 6 hours, this 'artcle' has accumulated 1 and 1/2 pages of posts. I believe it is fairly obvious that NO ONE outside of NBC considers this jack-#ff and 'expert' by any strectch of the imagination. Finally, I have seen this guy hit himself in the head with an inflatable hammer, its a little late to be trying to be taken seriously, isn't it?
CRAMER IS A TOOL... Seriously, does anyone listen to this idiot still?
it's like a man sitting on a chair that has a broken leg. He falls, and hurts himself... Cramer is the guy that comes over and says, you should not have sat on the chair it had a broken leg.
DUH!
Cramer= Yesterday's new's !
Cramer, how is FB doing? LOL
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