The U.S. markets may be down for the year, but it’s nothing compared to the rest of the world, Cramer pointed out Tuesday.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 1 percent for the year, the S&P 500 is down 5 percent and the NASDAQ is down 2.6 percent year-to-date. Germany, on the other hand, is off 15 percent, France dropped 17 percent, the U.K. is down 8 percent, Japan has given up 14 percent and China plummeted 23 percent.
So what’s going on? Cramer believes there are several reasons the U.S. markets aren’t being dragged down as much as other major countries.
First, credit goes to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. He’s lowered interest rates enough so that many of the stocks in the Dow yield far more than bonds.
CEOs are also part of the reason, the “Mad Money” host said. Many companies have sought to diversify away from any particular economy and have kept costs lean in order to allow for dividend boosts.
Looking at large cap companies, you have names like Apple , which isn’t being held hostage by Europe, and Exxon Mobile, which is a terrific play on energy. And huge drug companies like Johnson & Johnson , Merck and Pfizer have been trading on yield, not earnings.
“They are simply bonds with a little more upside,” he said.
Plus, many industrials and tech stocks have already built in a European collapse. So Cramer thinks bears won’t like what they hear now that earnings season has begun.
Lastly, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner also deserves credit, he said. Because of the “stress test pressure” he put on the financial institutions, our banks are now the strongest in the world, except for Canada.
“Sure, we should be making more money,” Cramer said, “but just think of the indices of those other countries and imagine for a moment if we ever get any real growth here in America, who knows how high we can go?”
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When this story was published, Cramer's charitable trust owned Apple.
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