Today's Relative Calm Is a Blessing

At last, no craziness. No up 300 on Hewlett-Packard (HPQ - commentary - Cramer's Take) -- although it is early. No major take-up of retailers because Home Depot (HD - commentary - Cramer's Take) didn't lose money, although that is rather surprising. No banking destruction despite the closing of TARP.

I am sure there are people who will say, "Look, we can't even rally on H-P," but I look at it differently: At least we are rational enough not to take everything up on H-P given that we know it is a special situation, as Intel (INTC - commentary - Cramer's Take), Qualcomm (QCOM - commentary - Cramer's Take), Nokia (NOK - commentary - Cramer's Take), Dell (DELL - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Cisco (CSCO - commentary - Cramer's Take) have all told us that things are horrible.

So why not? Why isn't it "rah, rah, sis boom bah!"? I think because people have been burned so many times that they can't take it anymore, and we need some new buyers who are not as worn down or bereft of capital.

It is also intriguing to me that Yahoo! (YHOO - commentary - Cramer's Take) is only up a dollar. The animal spirits of this market have really been sapped, as I would have thought that we would have a lot of yahoos taking up Yahoo! on the strength of an imminent Microsoft (MSFT - commentary - Cramer's Take) bid now that the animus is gone -- the animus being how much Ballmer despised Yang for doing what he did. I figured people would say that now Icahn can reach out to Ballmer and make something happen.

I think it will happen. Again, the market is subdued.

Which brings me back full-circle to Home Depot (HD - commentary - Cramer's Take). The fact that it is not a disaster and the fact that Lowe's (LOW - commentary - Cramer's Take) was not a disaster -- even though both said things are really getting much worse -- shows that these companies are better than I thought at managing both expenses and expectations. Could it be that they are just taking huge share from Sears (SHLD - commentary - Cramer's Take), as Lowe's often brags? Makes sense given where that stock has gotten to.

Of course, Exxon (XOM - commentary - Cramer's Take) is doing its thing, which is a bad sign if you just want a regular, normal up session. That's a sign that the ProShares Ultra gang, the guys who really gun this market or take it apart, will be at 'em later today.

Worth noting, though, that there is some calm.

At last.

At the time of publication, Cramer was long Qualcomm, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard.

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