Good Jobs Data Will Stabilize Tech

The impact of this employment number, a robust one, should be best felt in technology -- and we need it. We had a real rocking of tech last night off the Xilinx (XLNX - commentary - Cramer's Take) and National Semi (NSM - commentary - Cramer's Take) numbers, coupled with the cautionary Corning (GLW - commentary - Cramer's Take) update about big-screen televisions. You can't get a more widespread collection of data than from those three. They cover everything from big-screen TVs to electronic gadgets and cell phones to telco equipment.

If we had been given a weak employment number, unquestionably tech would lead us down today. Instead, I believe people will look for reasons to isolate these particular tech stories as an issue and focus on winning tech, notably Hewlett-Packard (HPQ - commentary - Cramer's Take) ahead of what I think will be a robust analyst day.

The truth is, of course, that Xilinx has been incredibly inconsistent, that Corning may no longer be as good a barometer as it was because there are a lot of glassmakers out there and National Semi has become an also-ran of late -- as has Texas Instruments (TXN - commentary - Cramer's Take), by the way (and I note this because of its upcoming midquarter update).

When you layer on Jefferies' downgrade of SAP (SAP - commentary - Cramer's Take) today and the weakness in Oracle (ORCL - commentary - Cramer's Take), the case can be made that anyone who buys tech can be too aggressive and that the only thing that worked Thursday was a momentum buyer who recommended Akamai (AKAM - commentary - Cramer's Take) on television.

I believe the key to the action today in tech will be Research In Motion (RIMM - commentary - Cramer's Take). It's launching big new products next week vs. Thursday's downgrade. If the latter is forgotten, you have to go to the tech well again, regardless of the last session's action.

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At the time of publication, Cramer was long Hewlett-Packard.

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