This Strong Market Is Hedgies' Worst Fear

Oh no, what happens if China bounces off the bottom channel tonight, the one that is oversold? What happens if it turns out to be just a classic pullback and we get a rally overseas? What happens if this was the pause that refreshes? What happens -- are you ready skidaddy -- if there is a big dropoff in unemployment claims tomorrow morning?

You have to admit that this plethora of positives, this parade of non-horribles, is the biggest fear of the hedge funds on the way home tonight. It's really a time when there's tremendous pressure on those needing the market down to try to hit this darned thing with call-selling and put-buying and to try to get a couple of key stocks down that transcend China.

Instead, it looks like we had our last chance to blow out the puts on an Apple (AAPL - commentary - Trade Now) or an Oil Service HOLDRs (OIH - commentary - Trade Now), specifically the Apple 160s and the OIH 100s.

There are many others like this: Procter & Gamble (PG - commentary - Trade Now), Union Pacific (UNP - commentary - Trade Now), 3M (MMM - commentary - Trade Now), Coca-Cola (KO - commentary - Trade Now), Verizon (VZ - commentary - Trade Now) and AT&T (T - commentary - Trade Now). All of them needed to be crushed today and stay crushed; you had to sell the puts or risk letting 'em go out worthless, given this close.

I am sure it is possible to craft another reason (or reasons) why we belong lower. But considering that you had the allegedly bad Hewlett-Packard (HPQ - commentary - Trade Now) -- I say allegedly because I myself was pleasantly surprised by the quarter -- and you had the so-called weak retail reports from yesterday on top of the plummeting European follow-through to the big, bad Chinese bear market, today should have been the real bell-ringer.

Instead, the bears should consider themselves lucky to be saved by the bell, considering the last few minutes of today's trading. You get a rally in China and a low employment claims number and an expiration that looks like it was meant to be unchanged from here, and you could have a TNT-fed rally, a rally that will make you wish that you had taken advantage of when the Dow drifted down to plus 45 at 3:30 p.m. And to think that turned out to be the only other opportunity to get in after that miserable opening.

At the time of publication, Cramer was long PG and HPQ.

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