Strong individual performers can buoy whole sectors, Jim Cramer says

• Outperformance in traditionally weaker sectors is a keen reminder to get in before market commentators catch on, CNBC's Jim Cramer said.
• Strong results from chipmakers, homebuilders and industrial stocks show that well-managed companies can buoy entire sectors.

Stocks that investors might expect to be shorted in the buildup to a recession are doing very well, buoying their whole sectors, CNBC's Jim Cramer said Thursday.

There are certain kinds of industries that have historically been targeted by short sellers in the run-up to recession, Cramer said, including railroads, semiconductors, homebuilders and automakers.

Steel firm Nucor would be an "obvious short" headed into a recession, Cramer said, but the company reported strong growth and "blew away the estimates." Analysts expected a slowdown but that didn't happen, he said, with the stock rallying over 5%.

Homebuilder D.R. Horton, for example, jumped after reporting a "radically better quarter" with a beat on the top and bottom lines and upping its full-year forecast, Cramer said. That's not an idiosyncratic performance either, he added, with homebuilders buoyed across the board.

Homebuilders are likely short candidates ahead of a recession, but that doesn't seem to be happening here, Cramer said.

Examples like those can be seen every day across myriad sectors, and testify to the strength of the economy despite bearish sentiment from analysts or commentators. There were some laggards, Cramer acknowledged, including AMD and Nvidia.

But on the whole, when investors look at the S&P 500, Cramer said, they have to keep in mind that it's a "host of stocks." Some move higher into a recession, others because a downturn could be milder than thought, and others because there isn't a chance of a recession, he added.

But as Cramer has noted before, strong performing companies with effective management can weather most storms.

"If you wait until everybody else knows what I just talked about, you'll be too late."

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