Cramer: The 8 Stocks That Control the Market

Warren Buffett just can’t move markets like he used to. Even his buyout of Burlington Northern Santa Fe wasn’t enough to push the Dow into positive territory.

• Cramer's Top 10 Natural Gas Stocks

It’s not his fault, though, Cramer said Tuesday. The only forces powerful enough to drive stocks are the same three sectors that led us up from the early March lows.

“Oil, tech and the banks are what matter,” Cramer said, “and without them we will not rally hard even when, logically, we should.”

These sectors are so important, he continued, that just eight stocks among them will tell you “all you need to know exactly what’s happening and what’s going to happen” in the market: JPMorgan Chase , Goldman Sachs , Wells Fargo , Bank of America , Google , Apple , Chevron and Schlumberger .

The big money is watching these groups because they’re key tells of the economy. Higher oil always signals improved economic health. A resurgence in tech means that consumers and corporations are spending again. And strong banks indicate the end of job losses, as people are better able to pay their mortgages and credit-card bills.

But with these stocks faltering, Cramer looked to a few defensive plays to buoy viewers’ portfolios. These are the companies that don’t need a strong economy to work, and he recommended buying them any time the market dips: Procter & Gamble , General Mills , McDonald’s , WellPoint , Kimberly-Clark , Pfizer and Bristol-Myers Squibb .

Cramer likes the industrials and retail on weakness as well, but he said that investors have time to build positions in these sectors as they wait for the trifecta of oil, banks and tech to regain their momentum. That’s a big reason he recommended the defensive stocks, because there’s still too good a chance for something to go wrong in the meantime.

In the end, though, we need that trifecta, all of them working at once, to take us higher. Nothing else – not even the Oracle of Omaha – can do the job.

When we get all three, Cramer said, we’ll get “a huge payout.” That could come Friday if the jobs number is strong. It may be worth as much as 200 or 300 points in the Dow.

Cramer’s charitable trust owns Bank of America, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Chevron, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase Procter & Gamble and Wells Fargo.

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