The Lay of the Market

Dichotomy today. You have the oils and the golds and the infrastructure names rallying along with the Coke (KO - commentary - Cramer's Take)-a-Mo (MO - commentary - Cramer's Take) contingent. That's because we have a split in the market's view. Some just view the Fed as totally hopeless and they can't buy enough drug and food names.

Here, I like Altria, for its safe yield, and Schering-Plough (SGP - commentary - Cramer's Take) for its growth. Don't forget Hologic (HOLX - commentary - Cramer's Take), CVS (CVS - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Inverness Medical (IMA - commentary - Cramer's Take) (the latter is down) as health care plays to augment Medco (MHS - commentary - Cramer's Take), which also works.

Others believe that an emergency meeting of the Fed is on the horizon and they want minerals and mining and worldwide growth ideas. Throw in tech; Hewlett-Packard (HPQ - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Corning (GLW - commentary - Cramer's Take) are both ridiculously undervalued given their growth. And, of course, the momentum players, which are easy to track: Las Vegas Sands (LVS - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Wynn (WYNN - commentary - Cramer's Take) say it all.

I think that we are in an "anything but retail or finance" moment. Sure, some special situations -- I'm thinking Costco (COST - commentary - Cramer's Take) here, Nordies (JWN - commentary - Cramer's Take), too -- certainly work and I would be an aggressive buyer of GameStop (GME - commentary - Cramer's Take) off their conservative guidance.

And the fortunes of financial stocks can't change until we get that failure and subsequent Fed cut.

The action in Freddie Mac (FRE - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Fannie Mae (FNM - commentary - Cramer's Take) is signaling something imminent. (I believe both will have to raise convertible preferred, which is why the common stock of each is in free fall; it's a great short against the coming paper/financing.)

I still contend that we must see a failure in one of the financials. While the hobbling of Fannie and Freddie is awful, they don't qualify as failures. E*Trade (ETFC - commentary - Cramer's Take) at $4 seems like an interesting potential failure; I wouldn't touch that one with a four-foot pole. Or a 10-foot pole. If you insist, go buy the senior debt. That's a better call on what can happen than the common. Not that I trust that paper, either.

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Jim 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. Watch Cramer on "Mad Money" weeknights on CNBC. Click here to order Cramer's latest book, "Mad Money: Watch TV, Get Rich," click here to order his 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." While he cannot provide personalized investment advice or recommendations, he invites you to send comments on his column by clicking here.

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