Establishing a Beachhead for the Longs

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Not everything's terrible. Yahoo! (YHOO - commentary - Cramer's Take) really did find ways to make some money and the lack of other viable Web sites finally has hit home. This is the last man standing if there ever was one!

Express Scripts (ESRX - commentary - Cramer's Take), Quest Diagnostics (DGX - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Aetna (AET - commentary - Cramer's Take) indicated this week that the health and cost containment businesses are still booming, even as lots of people thought they weren't. (The shorts were digging in their heels with all of these.)

Scripps (SSP - commentary - Cramer's Take), the cable channel company, shows that there's tons of money to be made with a defined strategy for developing new programming that works. Viacom (VIA.B - commentary - Cramer's Take) apparently is doing the same; its business is very strong.

Finally, Sara Lee (SLE - commentary - Cramer's Take) shows that if you can get costs down enough, you can grow margins. With the right mix of product you can get top and bottom line growth; SLE has it.

Are these enough to cause a rally? Wrong question. These are enough to propel these stocks higher. Until this week, I couldn't think of a short-term reason to own a stock.

Now there are a bunch of stocks worth owning short-term. That's a beachhead, one that we haven't had in months. Let's see if it holds.

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James J. Cramer is a director and co-founder of TheStreet.com. He contributes daily market commentary for TheStreet.com's sites and serves as an adviser to the company's CEO. Outside contributing columnists for TheStreet.com and RealMoney.com, including Cramer, may, from time to time, write about stocks in which they have a position. In such cases, appropriate disclosure is made. At the time of publication, Cramer was long Quest Diagnostics, Aetna, Viacom and Sara Lee. To see his personal portfolio and find out what trades Cramer will make before he makes them, sign up for Action Alerts PLUS. While he cannot provide personalized investment advice or recommendations, he invites you to send comments on his column to [e-mail]. Click here to get Cramer's book, "Confessions of a Street Addict."