Stocks are cheap on an earnings basis -- unless they have earnings risk. If they have no earnings risk, they are not cheap.

Therein lies the conundrum on a day like today. Let's say you went CAMPing today: You bought Coke (NYSE: KO) (Cramer's Take), Altria (NYSE: MO) (Cramer's Take), Merck (NYSE: MER) (Cramer's Take) and Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG) (Cramer's Take). Do you know that even after the precipitous falls last week and the declines we expect today, that none of them is historically cheap? Do you know that most of them are up significantly since last summer?

That's a real issue. You aren't buying them at rock bottom prices because they are up so much already.

Now, let's take the examples of the cyclical stocks in the Dow. They are cheap: United Tech (NYSE: UTX) (Cramer's Take), Honeywell (NYSE: HON) (Cramer's Take), Alcoa (NYSE: AA) (Cramer's Take). But their earnings estimates are considered vulnerable to the worldwide slowdown and a U.S. recession.

You can chicken out, buy some Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) (Cramer's Take), which has good earnings, or IBM (NYSE: IBM) (Cramer's Take), which just had great earnings, and in many ways those will be cheaper.