The Jobs Number Won't Fade From Memory

The "action" says the "number" wasn't so bad. The "action" makes people wonder what they missed. Here's the problem with that. The employment number lingers, in that we will now be faced with endless Thursdays that bring us back down to earth and remind us "hmmm, that September report was terrible."

Employment gains allow us to pay higher prices for stocks. We can sit here and say "the action" shows the employment number wasn't that bad, but "the action" won't help us own Target (TGT - commentary - Trade Now) or Caterpillar (CAT - commentary - Trade Now) or Joy Global (JOYG - commentary - Trade Now) or Union Pacific (UNP - commentary - Trade Now).

We are often in situations where the market in a given session doesn't lie, but doesn't exactly tell the truth. We are seeing money coming out of bonds into stocks today. We saw the opposite the other day.

I like to look at this one way only: If we had gotten a number consistent with job creation, then I think we could have gone to Dow 10,000 rather quickly. We didn't get that number regardless of the action.

It would make more "sense" if we went down big. I think that would have been a given if we hadn't gotten clocked yesterday. But the idea that next week we will only focus on earnings and we will take up all of those companies with good profits is too glib. We will not be thinking about the "action" today come Wednesday. We will be thinking about the number and whether Thursday's payrolls will be even worse than the number.

Any time we are totally gripped by a number and the number goes badly, we just play from number to number. I think everything I heard today tells me that unless the government decides to make more jobs, we aren't going to get it from the private sector.

And right now the "action" isn't creating more jobs. That's what matters.

At the time of publication, Cramer had no positions in the stocks mentioned.

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