"The Fed's Onto Something"
By Jim Cramer
RealMoney Columnist
2/19/2010 6:22 AM EST
"If you step back from the emotion of a Fed gone from soft to not-so-soft and ask what does it really mean, you come back to a simple concept: Are the banks strong enough to borrow from the private markets?
The answer, I think, is yes, except the ones that were goners anyway, including the several the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. will seize this weekend as part of their Friday night seizure policy.
That's really the only "real world" implication. That, and the relentless decline of the euro becomes a little more relentless.
Where I think this all gets so interesting is that there are already about 65% bears or correction-callers and I would like to know if any of them will use this decline to change sides or will their ranks continue to grow?
I think it will be the latter. I think that this market is quite despised and will get even more so as people think that any tightening is bad. People will not look at history and realize that when the Fed tightens it is because they are pretty certain that there will be employment growth. And if there is employment growth, so many of our problems go away that you will never get into the stocks that you might be tempted to sell today.
Of course, I like to look for stocks that are pulled down by the broad futures drag: Schlumberger (SLB - commentary - Trade Now) talking to Smith International (SII - commentary - Trade Now)? That means lots more consolidation ahead and that the BJ Services (BJS - commentary - Trade Now) deal wasn't a one-off. SLB wants to be more of a one-stop shop for the world's drilling boom.
Dell (DELL - commentary - Trade Now) screws up? Buy Intel (INTC - commentary - Trade Now), which will probably be down because of Dell even as the Dell conference call talked about the strength of the Intel product line in ways I have never heard before. Or Hewlett-Packard (HPQ - commentary - Trade Now), which had much better margins than Dell because it is much better run than Dell.
By the way, Intel's Nehalem is driving a lot of the next leg of PCs and tech does among the best in tightening scenarios. So do industrials during the early tightening phases.
I hope that some of these nat gas stocks come down with the new anti-inflation bent of the Fed knowing that some unimportant Devon (DVN - commentary - Trade Now) Asian play is going for at least $3 billion, about 10% of a company that will soon be the number one play on domestic natural gas.
Or maybe scoop up some Procter & Gamble (PG - commentary - Trade Now) after their accelerated growth statement at the conference Thursday.
Many stocks out there are at lower prices thanks to the Fed.
That's my take.
It is the minority take. We know what the market wants to do: It wants to go down.
And the bears? They are only good at one thing: telling us they told us so.
Random musings: Can't say I like the Fed's timing - after the close, with options expiration. I'm surprised by the tone deaf nature of it. "
(in
www.realmoney.com)