Four Trades for a Catalyst-Driven Time

If it's a catalyst-driven market, and I believe it is -- as opposed to a stock-picker's market, which is every market I have ever been in -- then you want to stay close to PNC Financial (PNC - commentary - Cramer's Take), GameStop (GME - commentary - Cramer's Take)-Electronics Boutique (ELBO - commentary - Cramer's Take) and palmOne (PLMO - commentary - Cramer's Take).

For PNC, which is the most hated of the banks, with only a handful of buys and mucho holds and sells -- including Bear Stearns and Keefe, Bruyette & Woods -- the long-awaited closing of the Riggs (RIGS - commentary - Cramer's Take) deal occurs this Friday.

PNC's got a gigantic buyback in place. It yields almost 4%. The overhang from the deal quickly will be accumulated and I think the process of breaking up PNC -- splitting off the Blackrock business, perhaps -- will be talked about in earnest. This bank will be the largest of the swallow-able banks out there after this deal closes. All you have to do is talk to the satisfied Fleet Financial holders to know what that means.

For palmOne, a heavily shorted stock -- 37% of the float is short -- the possibility of Verizon (VZ - commentary - Cramer's Take) certification this week for the Treo 650 could trigger rampant buying in the name. The 650's got an upgrade camera, an MP3 player and better email, and is much cheaper than the original 600. In it, you are getting the equivalent of an iPod Shuffle that takes pictures, makes calls and gives you the Internet. I like that. Verizon's where lots of people go to buy these things, so it is a very big deal.

There's lots of hoopla about Xbox and PlayStation this week, and the video-game conference on May 16 will cause lots of attention to be paid. Don't forget that the final episode of The Apprentice features a Sony (SNE - commentary - Cramer's Take) PlayStation event at a big nightclub in New York City, Webster Hall. That matters, because that show is one of the most heavily watched of all television shows. Because Electronic Arts (ERTS - commentary - Cramer's Take) virtually has eliminated itself as a play on this stuff with its shortfalls and Sony and Microsoft (MSFT - commentary - Cramer's Take) are too big to trade off it, I think that this is another shot in the arm for GameStop and for Electronics Boutique, its merger partner.

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At the time of publication, Cramer was long PNC Financial and Halliburton.

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. 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. Watch Cramer on "Mad Money" at 6 p.m. ET weeknights on CNBC. Click here to order Cramer's latest book, "Real Money: Sane Investing in an Insane World," click here to get his second book, "You Got Screwed!" and click here to order Cramer's autobiography, "Confessions of a Street Addict."