Upside Surprise for Consumer-Based Stocks?

What happens if earnings aren't terrible? Aren't they supposed to be? At least for consumer companies? Then what the heck happened at Kroger (KR - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Darden (DRI - commentary - Cramer's Take) yesterday? Both had great numbers. I mean really great numbers.

Of course, Kroger and Darden are the two best operators in their spaces. That's amazing, considering that Kroger was always an also-ran and Darden had been struggling with new concepts, something alleviated by their buying spree of Capital Grille and Longhorn (neither working well right now, but clearly headed in the right direction).

Darden's numbers were awesome: Olive Garden is showing some remarkable 5.8% same-store sales growth, the 55th consecutive quarter of growth. The numbers were back-end-loaded, with May being the strongest month. Sure, it's easy to say, "The rebates did it." But I am not buying it: You have to drive to Olive Garden and while there are a lot of Olive Gardens, they are not next door to most people!

Kroger simply passed on some pricing and has said over and over again that some inflation is actually good for them, despite what the Street might think.

Both companies might be set up for even better numbers next quarter, as Darden increased its dividend nicely (although they slowed the buyback) and Kroger will certainly get more inflation courtesy of the farm problems and the food-for-oil campaign favored in Washington and endorsed by putative frontrunner Barack "ethanol" Obama.

I mention both of these because they may have been natural shorts of the short crowd betting on both shortfalls and worse outlooks.

As I used to call my column: WRONG! If other companies follow these two and we remain oversold, you are going to get some serious upside surprises that could change the dynamic here.

I am not bullish, but I am observant, and these two merit observation.

Random musings: Strong-dollar crowd pressuring gold and oil futures. Once again I suspect this will be short-lived, but remember that tech goes up precisely in this environment. I am thinking Salesforce.com (CRM - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Qualcomm (QCOM - commentary - Cramer's Take), both with superior earnings profiles, as ways to play the bounce because they are both down badly.

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

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