Things Don't Fall Apart

Things didn't go wrong. Maybe that's another way of looking at this market today. Rather than look at it as if things weren't as bad as we thought, things just didn't go wrong.

Halliburton (HAL - commentary - Trade Now) didn't blow it even as the domestic part of its business could have. Eaton (ETN - commentary - Trade Now) didn't cut its dividend. Texas Instruments (TXN - commentary - Trade Now) didn't signal that all of the ordering was simply restocking, the endless bear case.

And -- something that would have had terrible consequences for unemployment in this country -- CIT (CIT - commentary - Trade Now) didn't go down for the count.

Sometimes all it takes is for things not to go wrong.

The public senses it. Legg Mason (LM - commentary - Trade Now) reports a decent quarter. That's the public no longer fleeing. That is how you can have a cyclical rally without intense bleeding in the pharma and soft-goods stocks. It makes the market less zero-sum.

This is one of those markets where it makes no sense at all to read the papers. They are killing you. There are only a handful of papers, like Investors Business Daily, that are willing to put out articles that talk about how not everything is going wrong.

The "right brigade" is the fifth column in the otherwise negative media army.

One last thought -- I saw Nouriel Roubini was on.

I didn't bother to listen.

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

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