These two are the "TARP banks" that must do equity deals. They are pilloried for their bad balance sheets and their need to see housing go up. Since the summer, every data point for housing has pointed up. It is just that the media refuse to understand what up is. The whole battle in housing has to do with the need to end the inventory overhang. There are three components to ending it:

1. Cessation of new building, as represented by new home construction. These numbers have been down, but every time they are reported, people go, "Woe is housing." It is true that there should be a "woe is housing stocks" moment. But if you want to end the overhang, you keep the new build down to where it is, to about where it was when we had half the number of people in the country.
2. Help from the government in terms of tax credits and low interest rates. We just got a nice extension and expansion of the credits, and the Fed is committed to keeping mortgage rates low. They are still under 5%, where the buyers feel emboldened and affordability remains fantastic.
3. The end to the foreclosure overhang. We got good news from Fannie (FNM - commentary - Trade Now) last week, a huge homeowner, that the troubled can stay on as renters. Wells Fargo is coming up with multiple schemes to keep people into otherwise foreclosed homes. The banks are not as under the gun to take the charges and sell the homes, because they have raised equity.

All of these points should be great reasons to buy BAC and WFC. They aren't working, because the two companies have been reluctant to do equity deals to pay back TARP. Plus BAC is leaderless and WFC is doubted. So they don't advance. They would ramp if they did equity deals, though. So we await them.

Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are both hung up on valuation and a lack of catalysts. They aren't "cheap," and there is nothing to move them other than a circle back to winners, which we don't have. I foresee these stocks getting back to their highs, though, as investment managers circle back to winners. Soon, their "no flies" nature will work in favor of them rather than against them because they lack the leverage of going from bad to good, as they are already good.

Apple and Google are two sides of the same coin. Both have estimates that are too low. Both are experiencing secular and cyclical gains. For Apple, that means a strengthening in traditional p.c. lines through corporate buying and the terrific iPhone story, which has been obscured by Motorola (MOT - commentary - Trade Now) and Research In Motion (RIMM - commentary - Trade Now) wars, as well as what is perceived as a weak China sell-through. Google doesn't have a catalyst other than earnings. Both companies, though, like JPM and GS, should benefit from a circling back to the "no flies" stories as the year progresses, and managers want to show how smart they are. The Admob acquisition Google made puts it well ahead of everyone else in the coming mobile ad world, which is the way of the future, because younger people can't be reached otherwise.

All of these stocks are bellwethers for this market. All have been stalled as other stocks have played catch-up.

I think with less than 50 trading days in the year, these important stories will gain adherents as people figure out that 2010 numbers are too low and that the chance for gains is too great to miss out on.

At the time of publication, Cramer was long GS, BAC, WFC and JPM.

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