Banks Keep Rolling Along

So oil has a day that it is up. Suddenly we sell tech all over again, and people are saying the bank move is over.

I think that is wrong. Merrill Lynch (MER - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Bank of America (BAC - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Wachovia (WB - commentary - Cramer's Take) are the tells here.

Merrill's still up big. That's so different from the Citigroup (C - commentary - Cramer's Take) secondary at $25 that gaffed everyone except the quickest flippers. You can flip all you want; the buyers are still there for Merrill, and that is gigantic. Why Bank of America? Because this gigantic bank is just a few points from having doubled in less than a month's time. Then there is Wachovia, which dipped to $13 and change the other day and is now once again above where CEO Bob Steel bought his stock. These banks are not going away and are not being shorted!

As for the oils, think about it. You get a decline from $148 to $121, and then we bounce a couple. Shouldn't that happen? Is that a freakout? Frankly, I can make a case that with banks and oil up, we are saying, "Look, no recession and moderate inflation, which is sure different from runaway inflation and horrid recession, where we were a fortnight ago."

And gold is still down. Natural gas is barely up, although there is, again, industrial demand below that $9 level. I regard the oil move as a good opportunity to scale out of some of the more outsized ones. (I'm making some moves in the group for Action Alerts PLUS.)

Tech is harder to fathom. We don't have a lot of good earnings in this sector, but it is loved on oil's decline. Have to like these biotechs and some of the higher-multiple techs. I just don't like the semis and semis equipment -- except for Qualcomm (QCOM - commentary - Cramer's Take) -- and yet those go up all of the time with oil's decline, and the converse is happening today.

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