This Market's Tells

Nice test case for the advance this morning. It's like we needed a break from the rally.

We woke up this morning thinking that what was good about Merrill Lynch (MER - commentary - Cramer's Take) last week is bad for Merrill Lynch now (disclosure of problems). We seem to want to look Merger Monday in the mouth, despite the sweetness of Textron's (TXT - commentary - Cramer's Take) and SAP's (SAP - commentary - Cramer's Take) generosity.

At moments like these, I like to find a tell about the market. This time I believe it will come from 3M (MMM - commentary - Cramer's Take), a Rest of World juggernaut that, as I explained on Stockpickr last week, I have lacked a handle on. If that stock rallies, we have a shallow pullback. The Goldman analyst has clout, so the price bump matters.

The flip side of the equation is Chipotle (CMG - commentary - Cramer's Take). If the Baird downgrade, which is all price, has any impact, that would be a sign that there is genuine weakness. There's nothing fundamental with the downgrade, just price.

That's a great microcosm for this market: nothing wrong, just price. If CMG doesn't go down much and if MMM goes up, we will shake the lethargy for certain.

I think that the P&G (PG - commentary - Cramer's Take) downgrade from Suntrust -- also a valuation call -- could be another tell, but Suntrust doesn't have the ax on the name, so it might not matter. Over on the Nazz, I am keeping an eye on any potential reversal in Apple (AAPL - commentary - Cramer's Take) and RIMM (RIMM - commentary - Cramer's Take), which have done so much heavy lifting that I'm worried about hernias!

At the time of publication, Cramer was long Goldman Sachs.

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