See if (NFLX) is traded within the Action Alerts PLUS portfolio by Cramer and Link
Think about it. How many times have you read that the individual investor is fleeing because of the volatility and the inability of stocks to make you money? How about the percentage of bears being the highest since the bottom in 2009? How about the off-the-charts record of short selling, making bets against the market -- 11.6% of shares sold short up 9.5% in July, the biggest gain in five years? How about the protesters on Wall Street expressing hatred of the process of capitalism, and who can blame them given the grave inequities in the system and a lead New York Times story of "Median incomes shrank further after recession"? How about the corporate spring breaking out, with shareholders and customers alike savaging Netflix(NFLX) , the greatest darling of the era?All of these signposts could be right, provided we are headed into a severe recession. That's right, not just a recession, but a severe one -- the 2008 scenario that, until today, has been the m.o. of this market.For a month now I have been saying that we have to take the Lehman scenario off the table in Europe, the scenario that Tim Geithner decried as fanciful in my interview with him, one that was mocked immediately as being some sort of house rap that the Treasurer Secretary had to maintain. But you know what happened this weekend? Dexia, a gigantic bank and a quintessential Lehman derivative replete with no real deposit base and a huge amount of bad holdings, caused France and Belgium and Luxembourg to unite to create a good bank and a bad bank and a solution was born. On top of that, Merkel and Sarkozy are now on the same page. Sure the Dog Catcher of Malta and the sewer commissioner in Slovakia may not be on board, but when the two biggest powers show you that Lehman isn't going to happen, you take off the systemic risk that everyone thought was on.Sure, it wouldn't matter if our data here was getting weaker. But number after number last week here showed no sign of degradation and the employment number, which was without a doubt strong and could not be caveated, made the recession call a bad one even as Washington has done nothing right at all to take it off the table. Plus, a nice confluence of a 75 cent drop in the price of gasoline and what turned out to be a robust back-to-school season amount to the need to restock and actually hire ahead of what was already written off to be a terrible holiday season.It wasn't just hiring that's looking up. How do you justify rail car loadings at the highest in three years if the economy is supposed to be the softest in three years? Can they all be dummy railcars? Gigantic Lionel toys? How do you justify channel checks that show that earth movers are in short supply? How do you rationalize the sale of a million expensive iPhones in a 24 hour period, especially when the new iPhone was supposed to be a huge disappointment?
Sure, the commodities markets have been signaling recession with copper and aluminum and iron and steel all horribly depressed. But could that just be the swinging of the pendulum? When the markets were robust companies like Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold(FCX) opened up old copper mines and the Chinese pumped out tons of steel and aluminum. Iron was never in short supply it just wasn't being mined. That changed with demand. Coal's been similarly victimized by its own success. And let's not forget the robust plantings for cotton that produced a bumper crop as farmers rush to plant what's in short supply.
/* Promo Alert */ .aapAlertPromo { background:#fff url('http://i.thestreet-static.com/files/tsc/v2008/css/images/aap_articlePromo.jpg') no-repeat; width:340px; height:70px; color:#000; } .aapAlertPromo a.findout { width:180px; font: bold 12px arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left:15px; margin-top:17px; color:#000; float:left; } #story .aapAlertPromo2 { background:#fff url('http://i.thestreet-static.com/files/tsc/v2008/css/images/aap_articlePromo.jpg') no-repeat; width:340px; height:70px; color:#000; } #story .aapAlertPromo2 a.findout { width:180px; font: bold 12px arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left:20px; margin-top:23px; color:#000; float:left; } #story .aapAlertPromo3 { background:#fff url('http://i.thestreet-static.com/files/tsc/v2008/css/images/aap_articlePromo.jpg') no-repeat; width:340px; height:70px; color:#000; } #story .aapAlertPromo3 a.findout { width:180px; font: bold 12px arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left:15px; margin-top:17px; color:#000; float:left; } #story p .aapAlertPromoNone { display:none; visibility: hidden; }Perhaps what really threw us off the scent was the price of oil. Ever since the president opened the strategic petroleum reserve in a move that was widely hailed as totally idiotic, the price of oil here has been in freefall.
See if (NFLX) is traded within the Action Alerts PLUS portfolio by Cramer and Link
But "here" is meaningless. Because of a total misreading of the oil in this country, all pipelines led to this one hub in Cushing Oklahoma. Because our oil exploration efforts had been for naught for years we were always in a deficit position in Cushing. But Eagle Ford and the Bakken, two finds that rivaled Prudhoe Bay in size, have made it so Cushing's been overwhelmed. The Cushing hub, as measured by West Texas Intermediate, can't handle all of the oil and has to be discounted. But if you can get that oil to any other part of the country then it goes by the Brent price which is $25 to $30 higher. Forget that it is outrageous that our own bountiful oil when mixed with Mexican and Canadian oil can pretty much meet our needs, the true price is the Brent price. I think Brent's manipulated higher than it should be. Nevertheless, if there is one thing for certain, the manipulation will not be stopped because, excuse me if I sound like the Occupying Wall Street people, the interests are too powerful to stop the prices from being inflated.If only the Occupy Wall Street crowd actually knew the enemies, which are the speculators, and, alas, the bankers.Which brings me to an interesting dichotomy. The cyclicals and the oils have been trading totally in synch with a 2008 scenario. With that off the table you can bet that the paid-to-wait stocks I have featured are no longer waiting and the big-dog machinery companies are now cheap.But what's not cheap? The banks. The headwinds to the banks are fearsome. You take off Lehman a propos of Dexia, that doesn't mean you take off pain. The selling out of Europe into our banks may be diminishing as, remember, they can't short over there so they short here, but the earnings power of the banks is almost nil and the government here wants them to make less money. When you have a whole cohort that is being told "you cannot make more money because we don't' like you and the protesters are right," then you need to lighten up into any bank rally.Have the facts changed so much as to warrant this rally? No, the facts were never as dire as the forecasts. Think about how many times I have been laughed at for saying it is not 2008. Then look at your screen. This is the "not 2008 after all" rally courtesy of the Europeans adopting a Malcolm X, by any means necessary, plan to stop the collapse of the European banking system. Let's banish 2008. It just isn't the right scenario.At the time of publication, Cramer held no positions in the stocks mentioned, though positions can change at any time.
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