Look Forward on Price-to-Earnings Ratios

You want takeovers? We have takeovers: Lehman Brothers (LEH - commentary - Cramer's Take) to buy Neuberger Berman (NEU - commentary - Cramer's Take), Lennar (LEN - commentary - Cramer's Take) to buy Newhall Land & Farming (NHL - commentary - Cramer's Take).

You want earnings surprises? We have earnings surprises: Texas Instruments (TXN - commentary - Cramer's Take), Amazon (AMZN - commentary - Cramer's Take), Broadcom (BRCM - commentary - Cramer's Take), anything Net.

You want cash on the sidelines? We have four trillion dollars looking for a home.

You want no competition to stocks? Try buying a bond and losing money faster than you can with any stock.

And yet I don't discern any particular love yet for this market. The takeovers? So what, they're not big company takeovers. The earnings surprises? They're all made up anyway. The cash on the sidelines? It's been on the sidelines.

So what do people want from this market? They want price-to-earnings ratios to be low on trough earnings, on last year's earnings, on the earnings being reported now. I think what most aggravates people is the lack of low P/E ratios on the earnings companies are reporting now.

To which I say, dream on. You aren't going to get low P/Es on current earnings. A listener to my radio show emailed me yesterday to complain that Intel (INTC - commentary - Cramer's Take) is at 50 times earnings and therefore can't be owned. Do you know when Intel was last at 50 times earnings? I paid that in 1988 after Intel had shut down its DRAM division. Was that the most overvalued moment in Intel's history?

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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 Broadcom and Intel. 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]. Listen to Cramer's RealMoney Radio show on your computer; just click here. Click here to buy Cramer's latest book, "You Got Screwed!" Click here to order Cramer's autobiography, "Confessions of a Street Addict."