Without Futures Support, Stocks Look Ugly

Without the futures ramping, don't things seem so expensive? Those consumer nondurables -- uh-oh, they have dollar pressure. The stimulus package of China? Is that why we bought Fluor (FLR - commentary - Cramer's Take)? Where are the orders? All those oil stocks looked so inexpensive with oil at $66 going to $70. But we just paid $2.25 at the pump with no line and the futures are at $60. Citigroup (C - commentary - Cramer's Take) hit a 52-week low despite talking about an acquisition, and Bank of America (BAC - commentary - Cramer's Take) is a smidge above the 52-week low. What happens if it takes it out? What happens if Google (GOOG - commentary - Cramer's Take) takes out $300? Where is the Nasdaq bid, for heaven's sake? Where did all of those morning buyers go who kept coming back right until the end?

And that's the problem, isn't it? The collective cheapness of equities vs. the overvaluation of stocks. We simply don't get an opportunity to do anything but lose less than the other guy, and we are supposed to like it because stocks only get this inexpensive once or twice in a lifetime.

"Time to buy?", a great piece by John Authers in yesterday's Financial Times, is emblematic of what I am talking about. He's got the story: Bears and value guys are warming up to the market.

At the same time, what would get these guys to like the market? To actually like it? If it never got to the levels they like it to go to. That's the answer. Everything else is just early.

Which leaves ourselves open for the endless declines in too-cheap-to-ignore Goldman Sachs (GS - commentary - Cramer's Take), "which must have huge problems even though we like it long term," or to Citigroup, which has to be as cheap at $11 as it was in 1990 (except it went to $5 then when it was really cheap), or GE (GE - commentary - Cramer's Take), which was cheap ... oops -- negative piece in The Wall Street Journal about what else, its finance division, which has made it cheap for 30 points and is a monster, obviously, because it borrows short and lends long, which should be good except there is a belief it can only borrow from the federal government.

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