The Game Plan After TXN and WLP

Texas Instruments (TXN - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Wellpoint (WLP - commentary - Cramer's Take) saying that business isn't as good as they thought vs. the most oversold we have been in ages. Which one triumphs?

We know from after-hours trading that UnitedHealth (UNH - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Humana (HUM - commentary - Cramer's Take) are down double-digit percentages. Until last night, Wellpoint was regarded as one of the best HMOs. (CRT Capital, though -- the outfit I follow on this stuff because Sheryl Skolnick is so good -- thought WLP's management wasn't so hot. Kudos there.) So much for that.

Because WLP had a decent reputation, all of these stocks will be shot first, with questions asked later. They will all be presumed now to have been going down because of exactly what ailed WLP, as if the mystery is solved, and what looked like historically cheap prices aren't cheap at all. The industry's already catching a downgrade, and the guidedown is pretty monstrous in size. The declines are of merit away from WLP until we know how much is really company-specific.

Texas Instruments gave you an update last week. This is the one I alluded to late last week when I said that it said great things about the long term, and the long-term had been quite a difficult proposition in terms of how much it lost you short term.

I thought initially that TXN wouldn't have that much bad pin action because the semis are so beaten up and because people will interpret this decline as a decline in Motorola (MOT - commentary - Cramer's Take). But they said that Nokia (NOK - commentary - Cramer's Take) ticked down near the end, too. So that's not a viable thesis. Repercussions will be swift there.

Now, given those negatives, what do we have to say for the oscillator I follow being minus 8? It means you HAVE to find something to buy.

To me, that means something that can bounce that is doing well. With oil spiking vertically in the a.m., I don't trust oil. What happens if oil reverses?

Ag would seem to work but we know the bears are operating there.

To me you go back to high-yielders that can bounce. With Vodafone (VOD - commentary - Cramer's Take) saying all the right things, how about Verizon (VZ - commentary - Cramer's Take) -- although someone might interpret TXN as bad for them, so not pure, but certainly bouncable given its wireless partner's bullishness. With Altria (MO - commentary - Cramer's Take) starting the road show, how about that one?

I also think the industrials that did well this quarter, most notably 3M (MMM - commentary - Cramer's Take), Honeywell (HON - commentary - Cramer's Take) and United Tech (UTX - commentary - Cramer's Take) could rally, the last one being so bizarrely punished it's amazing. And then, off a weak dollar, and a week's worth of declines, maybe the drugs.

Its funny, if it weren't for Wellpoint, that group is what I might have reached for, and if it weren't for Texas Instruments, I would have taken something from that group, too.

What a tough market when you are scared of buying something when the market is incredibly oversold. But who knows what companies have looked at January and February and concluded they can't make their forecasts?

At the time of publication, Cramer was long UnitedHealth, Verizon and Altria.

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