Pensões em Portugal são das que mais vão consumir receita

[Automech]

O bailout de Portugal em termos de dinheiro são meros trocos e nunca esteve em causa. A preocupação é que o próximo da fila é a Espanha e nós estávamos / estamos a servir de rolha.

[Champignon]

2. Portugal: Total sideshow and not important at all, except as a way to measure hedge funds' attempts to get the market down. It will be bailed out. No one wants the euro to go away.

É sempre importante sabermos como é visto do lado de fora. E parece-me bem real esta visão.

[Ulisses Pereira]

"Putting This Market's Negatives to the Test"

By Jim Cramer
RealMoney Columnist
3/23/2011 11:20 AM EDT


"Yesterday I played true-or-false and friend-or-foe with the top executives in the wireless industry. It elucidated some truth. I want to play it right now with the market to clear up some of the news flow and make sense of the market.

Why bother to do this? Because if the current interpretation of the news were "real" and "honest" and "cogent" and "smart," we would be down 110 points and 1% on the S&P 500. I care about making money, not finding explanations that say why we are down a lot when we aren't. I favor intuitive logic, not counterintuitive counterintelligence. Sorry to be nettlesome and meddlesome, but the muted selloff needs to be explained through some "good" and "bad" reinterpretation and deprogramming.

Doesn't mean we can't go down big, as there are big negatives, but the positives are banned for the air and the Net by some sort of ideological short-selling illogic that is clearly motivated by a desire to overweight some negatives and underweight the positives. Business as usual. I do this so people can stop being "astonished" by the relative strength of the market in light of the "cavalcade of bad news."

So let's take a look:


1. Horrible new-home sales: This is a positive. We need no new homes built in this country. We have to hope that this number discourages the principal enemy of the housing glut: homebuilders. They won't stop. We have enough foreclosed houses, which are now coming on to the market aggressively, and hopefully this number makes it clear to the Pultes (PHM - commentary - Trade Now) and the Hortons (DHI - commentary - Trade Now) that they should just stop constructing. Those stocks remain terrible, and the Housing Index (HGX) is too high. Much of the problem here came from Congress, which allowed the $10,000 tax break to apply to new homes, so there was no cessation in building.

2. Portugal: Total sideshow and not important at all, except as a way to measure hedge funds' attempts to get the market down. It will be bailed out. No one wants the euro to go away.

3. Higher oil prices: Just plain bad at this point, except for the domestic producers that can produce it for prices between $8 and $60 -- that's the range for the easy stuff and the highest production costs I have heard. But the rest of the stocks are just going to be hurt now, including the oils. The inventory numbers show the conundrum here. We are awash in oil in all the wrong places, so we are unable to bring down the regional price in oil. Monday's run in oil and in oil stocks clearly was wrong at this point. Now it's bad for retail and apparel.

4. Japan: Terrible for tech, good for everything else. You can't get a lot of products that you thought you could, so tech remains a sell. But companies that make things that can help rebuild, particularly power systems, will do great.

5. Libya: Without close air support of rebel troops, you could argue that the allies cannot win this war. Air support is really only successful as an adjunct to soldiers on the ground, and the rebels seem overmatched. The colonel was supposed to head to the hills when the airstrikes began. Instead, he headed to the bunker. Sounds familiar, a la April 1945. Not good for now. We need a supporter in his inner circle to kill him. Could be a factor.

6. Commodities other than oil: Good! The iPath Dow Jones Copper ETN (JJC - commentary - Trade Now) is the operative sign that we are not having a double dip, even as some commentators are back using that term when it comes to housing and others are talking about demand destruction, which produces a double dip, as it helped create a downturn in 2008. Copper is off of Japan, but today is a day when there are too many offsets.

7. Dollar: The CurrencyShares Euro Trust (FXE - commentary - Trade Now) must keep going up to sustain any rally. It can go up until, like oil, we get the downside, which is higher rates. We are not there yet. FXE weakness is bad. Keep it on your screen. It can trump the goodness of copper if the FXE really falls.

8. Bank action: One of the worst signs for a market. The big rally off the lows was about the banks returning capital. The bad news from Bank of America (BAC - commentary - Trade Now) this morning is the correct metaphor for the group, which is now below where it was before the dividend news. SunTrust (STI - commentary - Trade Now) breaking the print price on the secondary is a totally grim event. Citigroup (C - commentary - Trade Now) should be making a stand soon, but not yet, as emerging markets are perceived as cooling. Don't forget, Elizabeth Warren is in charge again, and she wants to wreck bank profitability, and she is allowed to run amok by the administration. Only big employment gains are going to turn things. We are fighting for Bank of America in Action Alerts PLUS, although we trimmed it very big yesterday.

9. Apple: You can't rally tech without Apple (AAPL - commentary - Trade Now). It is the umbrella for everything high multiple, even though if you back out cash, it is not expensive.

10. Autos: Dreadful group, it was in the doldrums before Japan, now just totally in the doghouse. No sign yet that it is turning, although it's a great value for the longer term. No one cares about the longer term, so it remains a sell. It's a hated group after Ford's (F - commentary - Trade Now) CEO paid himself -- regardless of how well the stock did, nobody likes to see big exec pay anymore. General Motors (GM - commentary - Trade Now) is now considered a huge failure. We are letting it come in for Action Alerts PLUS.
Right now there are more negatives than positives, but it is important to recognize that all negatives are not created equally - to believe that Portugal's negative is more important than Japan's positives is just fanciful.

I hope this puts this thing in the context you need for today's environment. There is just too much misdirection right now to allow the bogus interpretation of the news flow to force your hand. Remember last night's piece about how the rising of the market is no mystery: companies are doing well, it is just that some companies are doing a lot less well than others. That's why even though the balance of negatives is dreadful, it is not so dreadful that we are cascading down.

At the time of publication, Cramer was long AAPL, BAC and GM. "

(in www.realmoney.com)