Stocks' Vicious Moves Can't Be Contained

People got suckered in last week. It feels like the last part of the move was just shorts covering and some people stepping in from the sidelines betting that we are finally going to have a month in which stocks rally.

Of course we borrowed that upside and we also had the triple firepower of these ultra funds coming in to blast the market down in the last half hour -- remember, these funds exacerbate the direction.

If you are like me, you get a shiver when you see the moves that are getting made by outfits like Citigroup (C - commentary - Cramer's Take), Wells Fargo (WFC - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Bank of America (BAC - commentary - Cramer's Take). They are all trading in ranges that should take months to get through.

It is almost as if any institutional memory about how stocks like these major banks trade is a hindrance. I have no formula to make the moves easier to comprehend. They are so vicious that they can't be contained.

As usual, the really nauseating stocks were the oils and oil-related plays, which swing in 5- to 7-point increments pretty much several sessions a week. This despite oil's stubborn clinging to around $50 a barrel and natural gas at the same price for a while.

Chevron (CVX - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Exxon (XOM - commentary - Cramer's Take) have become ping-pong balls. I don't even know if the stocks can be related to the commodity on days like today. After the close, Chevron announced that it is re-evaluating its drilling budget. No kidding.

But Schlumberger (SLB - commentary - Cramer's Take) down 8 and Transocean (RIG - commentary - Cramer's Take) down 9 sure had figured that out.

I was talking to Ray Milchovich tonight, the CEO of Foster Wheeler (FWLT - commentary - Cramer's Take), and we were totally flummoxed about how stocks in this environment could easily trade through cash.

Stocks are not reflecting anything but sellers' desires to raise money, coupled with ETF cram-downs that move stocks at will.

As I have said before, when I told people if you need cash for the next five years for a major purchase, this is not the place to hold your money. It's just too erratic, too frenzied and yes, too broken.

At the time of publication, Cramer was long Chevron and Foster Wheeler.

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