TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says intra-quarter signs that all was well were far off the mark.Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) (Cramer's Take) totally fooled us. Throughout the quarter, we heard rumblings that things were just right.
Instead, Dell gave us a quarter that reminds us that the body language in tech has become meaningless. Never forget that you can only trust these guys on the day they report, and that report -- with its depictions of a slowdown across all geographies -- made me want to go out and pick up some Altria (NYSE: MO) (Cramer's Take).
The Dell report reminds me of Nordson (NASDAQ: NDSN) (Cramer's Take), another company that has made you feel all rosy about the international markets. But with that industrial play, it was only Europe that was bad.
Dell had to give the whole Western and Eastern world slowdowns, something that made you pause and think, "Well, why has it been so darned good for Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) (Cramer's Take) and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) (Cramer's Take)?"
I am betting that the money switches back to reality, the reality of slowdown, after a nice GDP number inflated by exports and by rebates.
And I am thinking that Dell has, once again, lost the trust that it so diligently pursued for the last two years.
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RELATED LINKS:
Dell's Profit Pinched
Defaults Slow, but Don't Call It a Comeback
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Jim Cramer is a director and co-founder of TheStreet.com. He contributes daily market commentary for TheStreet.com's sites and serves as an adviser to the company's CEO. At the time of publication, Cramer was long Hewlett-Packard and Altria.
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