Propped Up by Thin Air

A friend emails and says that "they" are trying to take the Oil Services HOLDRs (OIH - commentary - Cramer's Take) up in my face.

And it's true. All day today there was a bid for the oil drillers, mostly from people playing the "they are down so much I have to buy them" game.

I have played it, too -- all my life. The best way to win, though, is to set an arbitrary limit of how much you are willing to make and then let the rest be taken by others.

With the oscillator at the highest level in ages, with the oil service companies like Halliburton (HAL - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Schlumberger (SLB - commentary - Cramer's Take) laying off people -- as we found out after the close -- and with Chevron (CVX - commentary - Cramer's Take) totally blowing the quarter and clearly not locking in any sales of crude at high levels, I just cannot make the case for these stocks. They are up huge and they have no earnings underpinnings to speak of.

With bears prowling, and a couple of well-timed bear ultra oil stock sales, you can knock this group down 10% in a heartbeat.

Once again, "the action" defined the day, as in "the action's great despite Wal-Mart (WLM - commentary - Cramer's Take)." I like that call. Lately I have had on a couple of machinery company CEOs on and none of them is seeing anything good until 2010 or 2011 -- too far for this guy, as I need to see a turn six months ahead before I get bullish on stocks that are up huge. I think we are in the "money-in" moment, where people are averaging down and contributing money and others are looking at the charts, many of which, again, look great.

I just want to wait again for fat pitches. The fat pitches have come and gone. Those playing now are overstaying their welcome.

Random musings: Call me an apologist, but you know what? I am going against today's outrage over at TheStreet.com... I don't blame the banks one bit for not wanting to lend. They don't have any equity funding. Everything they lend against goes down in value almost immediately because of deflation. They aren't allowed to get big-time deposits from companies. They are scared to death by what happened to Wachovia and Washington Mutual and, most important, Lehman, which changed the world. I don't begrudge them one bit. I do wish that Bank of America (BAC - commentary - Cramer's Take) hadn't taken its handout and bought a bank in China, but they didn't even want the money and they had to take it... Maybe I am missing something but excuse me, I don't see anything out of Macworld (link to hot story) that makes me want to buy Apple (AAPL - commentary - Cramer's Take). Maybe Apple products. But not Apple.

At the time of publication, Cramer was long Wal-Mart.

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