Tech Can't Do It Alone

Tech wants to rally. Perhaps because, alas, the fundamentals are undeniably good? You have to go through the charts to see this bull market in tech: Analog Devices (ADI - commentary - Trade Now), RF Micro (RFMD - commentary - Trade Now), Skyworks Solutions (SWKS - commentary - Trade Now), Cree (CREE - commentary - Trade Now), Starent (STAR - commentary - Trade Now) and Brocade (BRCM - commentary - Trade Now).

All sorts of little guys to go with Apple (AAPL - commentary - Trade Now) and Amazon (AMZN - commentary - Trade Now) and Google (GOOG - commentary - Trade Now), which have been down for what seems like ages. Even Hewlett-Packard (HPQ - commentary - Trade Now) is ramping, and that's been a total loser.

But you know what? It isn't enough. We cannot rally convincingly in just tech. Time and again, we have been beaten back when we have only one sector as a leader, whether it be oil or agriculture or fertilizers. We need breadth, which is what was so great about the oil/bank/tech combo.

A tech-only combo will continue to lead us nowhere.

Now it is true that today I saw a nascent "lower gasoline" rally in the apparels (Nike (NKE - commentary - Trade Now), VF Corp (WFC - commentary - Trade Now)) and Tiffany (TIF - commentary - Trade Now). But I do not find the Family Dollar (FDO - commentary - Trade Now) gains encouraging, as FDO is the wrong tell (even as much of it came because of better gross margins).

Retail can be a good spur as people recognize that gasoline's about to go back to $2, a gigantic stimulus. So can restaurants, the winter's leader on lower oil prices and I see Panera (PNRA - commentary - Trade Now) at last stabilizing and Yum! Brands (YUM - commentary - Trade Now) on the move. Ruby Tuesday (RT - commentary - Trade Now) wasn't half bad either. Don't forget Charming Shoppes (CHRS - commentary - Trade Now), even though that was probably the "Cramer effect" at work.

But without a concrete rally in banks or health care -- my pick to replace oil -- we don't have the horses to mount another attack on Dow 8600, which now looks like a distant memory and the total top of the range.

I love a late-day rally. It makes those who bought feel great. But we need leadership to have a serious advance.

At the time of publication, Cramer was long HPQ and VFC.

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