Trying to get a handle on how serious the situation is becoming in Europe? Cramer says this stock speaks volumes.
That's Banco Santander .
"If you want to get a read on Europe, you need to keep track of the price action in Santander," Cramer said.
Plain and simple.
When the stock declines the overseas financial malaise usually gets worse and when it rallies the crisis ebbs.
Of course that begs the question – in the days ahead what's more likely - a rally or decline?
In an effort to determine future price action, many pros including Jim Cramer turn to technical analysis.
For insights into Santander, Cramer turned to research provided by Tim Collins a colleague at RealMoney.com.
Looking at the daily chart, the price action may be deceiving because the stock has declined recently. But according to Collins the chart is anything but negative. He sees a number of signs that indicate it's close to making a move higher.
- Santander has what's known as a bullish divergence in two very important momentum indicators, the RSI, or relative strength index, and the stochastics.
As you can see from the chart in the video, both of these lines have been going up while the stock was going down.
Based on the strength in the two momentum indicators, if Santander can simply hold above $7.25, which is about 20 cents below where it was at the time of writing, then Collins thinks the stock could see a push toward $8 over the next few weeks.
- Santander's Triple Exponential Moving Average or TRIX is making a bullish crossover.
According to Collins, that's classic signal that you should buy the underlying stock.
- Santander's weekly chart has just gone through a rounding bottom pattern for the fourth time in two years.
Normally, when you get these bottoms, they're typically followed by a breakout.
All told, the technical action appears to be very bullish.
"If Collins is right, that's very good news, because this giant Spanish bank is a terrific gauge of Europe," said Cramer. "If Santander starts rallying and rallying hard, then we have to believe that the situation across the Atlantic is getting better."
If you want to play the technicals, Collins thinks you could put on a partial position in Santander right now. If the stock falls about a buck to $6.50, you eat the loss and move on.
But if the momentum starts to increase, which is what Collins expects to happen, then pretty quickly Santander should push at the $8 level, possibly before the end of the year, and that's where he'd put on the second half of his position.
Technicals suggest that if Santander breaks out over $8, it could be on target to hit $10.50 at some point next year.
"After all the torture they have put us through, it seems reasonable that we can finally make a profit," said Cramer.
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