Cramer: Not enough leadership for a comeback
Jim Cramer didn't expect to have a good day on the market on Friday. After all, when the market leaders are shot down one by one, you can't expect to have a good day.
"In this kind of environment, it's hard to make any headway given that we are just being led by a small group of domestic stocks that benefit from lower gasoline prices," the "Mad Money" host said.
One example of leaders being shot down was Biogen, a long-time Cramer fave in the biotech group. It reported astonishingly bad numbers on Friday. At the beginning of the year, Biogen forecast 14 to 16 percent growth for its MS drug, but now it's looking at a mere 6 to 8 percent.
As a result of Biogen's weakness, it pulled down the whole sector. After all, the entire group is connected to one another in biotech ETFs. So, even though Celgene, Regeneron and Gilead had amazing things going for them, they were all taken down by Biogen.
Or how about the aggressive credit card company Capital One? The banks have been huge leaders for this earnings period, as they are the main beneficiaries to the Fed raising rates. But they never do better in a rising credit risk environment when more people default on loans.
Cramer thought the nightmare of loan defaults was in the past of the Great Recession—until he read the results of Capital One. In an attempt to expand quickly, it had to increase its loan loss provision by 21 percent.
"Talk about a piece of data that took your breath away. You think the most important group in the market can rally when one of its members reports something that hideous? No way," the "Mad Money" host said.
Then there was health care, which has saved the day for investors on many occasions. But then things all changed when Anthem announced it was buying Cigna, and somehow both stocks went down. That was not the pattern Cramer expected to see from a health care consolidation.
Granted, there are some high-growth leaders in the market right now that are obvious. Such as the stunning number from Amazon that sent the stock soaring 11 percent on Friday. Amazon is part of Cramer's high-growth stock combination that he has been watching called FANG—Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google.
Cramer also saw there was pressure exerted by China on the natural resource plays. Essentially it comes down to those companies that sell oil, and China uses oil, then the company will get killed. If you move coal, and China uses coal, then forget it. If you sell elevators, turbines, truck engines or even consumer packaged goods into China, then your stock is suspect.
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The good news is that if oil prices continue to go down, then domestic stocks could begin to flourish once again. Looking back, those were the stocks that rallied hard when oil fell and then peaked when oil bottomed.
However, all of that doesn't matter to Cramer. Right now, he doesn't see enough leadership in the market to mount any kind of a comeback.
"But we can't afford too complacently negative because whenever we have done that in 2015, it always comes back to bite us. I bet this time will be no different," Cramer added.
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