Another Positive Sign: CEOs Crowing

Three execs, three industries, three positive inflection points. That's my takeaway from my "Mad Money" interviews with three CEOs: Murry Gerber from EQT (EQT - commentary - Trade Now), Charles Bunch from PPG Industries (PPG - commentary - Trade Now) and Eric Wiseman from VFCorp. (VFC - commentary - Trade Now).

If back-to-school were as bad as people say, then VFC, with Wrangler and North Face and Jansport and Reef, should have felt it. But that's not the case. Inventories are lean, demand is good, and demand will be great year over year soon, Wiseman said. I saw no incentive for Wiseman to be positive if it weren't the case. Remember, this is a company that has had to shade down earnings estimates for a bit here. It was clear that's not happening this time.

The turn is for real at PPG, and Bunch wanted people to know about it. Coatings are good, pricing is strong, and the book of business is getting better. BB&T's Frank Mitsch, my favorite chemical analyst, bumps numbers this morning. Just robust, again particularly year over year.

EQT is the most interesting. Murry Gerber told a positive story about reduced drilling costs and increased production of nat gas. Given the weakness of the futures, this is good news for the future. Natural gas is a basic building block of a lot of industries, as diverse as Kimberly-Clark (KMB - commentary - Trade Now) and Dow Chemical (DOW - commentary - Trade Now). Demand means health.

These CEOs aren't griping. They are crowing. It's a big change at the margin.

As Wiseman said, you can't go from negative 8 to positive 8. You can get to low-single-digit negatives on the way to positives.

That pretty much sums up a lot of what I see. This doesn't necessarily power us higher, because the market ran on this. But also not a reason to sell off big, which is important, because I feel the number of vocal bears keeps growing, and the data don't show that would be the right course to take here. Doing nothing is a better move, and waiting for a dip to buy, because things are getting better across the board.

At the time of publication, Cramer was long PPG and VFC.

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