Any Downside Should Now Be Muted

Here's a new one: I don't trust the futures, but this time on the downside. We could get giant cuts from Europe and the Brits this week and given that it is international trade that is weighing us down, I would think that the declines we all expect after that record-breaking advance last week will not be vicious and will be muted.

I think that we have to watch the Nasdaq again for tells. I'm sure that this time some people will say that gadgets didn't sink as low as we thought on Black Friday, which means a return to big glass screens -- Corning (GLW - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Intel (INTC - commentary - Cramer's Take) -- and perhaps once again hopes for Apple (AAPL - commentary - Cramer's Take) and for Research In Motion (RIMM - commentary - Cramer's Take).

There is also a newfound expectation that with all the money the Fed is printing, if you get any sign that Europe is willing to play ball, you are going to see the world trade stocks moving back up.

Here's the real issue for this market. There's actually so little time between now and year-end and so much performance is needed to be made -- a la 1998 -- that I think there will at last be mutual funds who want to gain performance and hedge funds that have less likelihood of redemptions simply because the market will be kinder and gentler.

The only sticking points are

1. unemployment Friday, to be offset by European rate cuts, and
2. the GM (GM - commentary - Cramer's Take) auto bailout, and we can tell already that both management and the unions will not let themselves be embarrassed again.

In other words, I do not see a decline of any magnitude. I do see plenty of people who want in and a market that is still not overbought enough to be dangerous after last week's run.

At the time of publication, Cramer had no positions in the stocks mentioned.

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Know what you own: Cramer mentions Intel. Other companies in the semiconductor industry include AMD (AMD - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Texas Instruments (TXN - commentary - Cramer's Take).

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