Jim Cramer says to get used to the market having down days, because the Dow didn't get to 19,975 without them, and it won't get to 21,000 without them, either.
"Sell-offs are a natural occurrence, and if they never happened, we wouldn't be fixated on Dow 20,000 because we would be closer to Dow 200,000," the "Mad Money" host said.
The market declined on Thursday, and Cramer explained the reasons why and whether investors need to worry about it.
The first thing Cramer does when he dissects the tape is to figure out what the leadership stocks are. On the downside on Thursday, it was retail, especially Bed Bath & Beyond, which tanked 9 percent after missing projections.
We don't want to come into 2017 so vulnerable that we can repeal lots of our recent gains. I don't think things are as negative as some of the retailers indicate.Jim Cramer
The Bed Bath & Beyond pain cascaded into the retail group, and hurt everything from Wal-Mart, to Target, to Dollar General. It certainly didn't help that most analysts didn't predict this, Cramer said, with the expectation that a colder winter and the confluence of Christmas and Hanukkah would help sales.
Many investors were also shocked that Finish Line reported such hideous numbers.
Boss also flagged the issue of cross-border taxation on imports, which could impact many retailers that import billions of dollars in items.
"Not even the lower taxes so many are expecting from the Trump administration can mitigate the kind of gross margin decline on true tariff like that would accord, since it's really just a targeted tax hike on importers," Cramer said.
Members of the cloud, like Red Hat, were also hit hard on Thursday, along with food-packaging company Conagra.
Ultimately, it made sense to Cramer that after a stretch of days rallying that the market would cool off a bit.
"We don't want to come into 2017 so vulnerable that we repeal lots of our recent gains. I don't think things are as negative as some of the retailers indicate," Cramer said.
Meanwhile, good numbers from Darden and Carnival gave him hope, though neither are based in the mall or would get hit by Trump's import taxes.
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