As a reality check about where to spend my time, I always find the New High list to be the most refreshing gauge there is. In a brutal market like this, you tend to forget that there is money being made every day on the long side. The New High list is where that money is being made. Take the list from this weekend. It is chock-full of decidedly unmixed messages about what is making you money in this market.

Immediately, a whole group of stocks just jumps out at you: restaurant stocks. Darden (DRI Quote - Cramer on DRI - Stock Picks) is there. So is Wendy's (WEN Quote - Cramer on WEN - Stock Picks), Landry's (LNY Quote - Cramer on LNY - Stock Picks) and Jack in the Box(JBX Quote - Cramer on JBX - Stock Picks). If one or two were on the list, you could say, hmm, coincidence. But this kind of pattern is just downright noisy. It is saying, "Mid-priced restaurants work."

Interestingly, this group correlates quite well with a decline in wage inflation. I think the restaurant move might be signaling a shift in marginal costs in favor of restaurants. These companies have had to pay far more than the minimum wage to staff their stores in the past few years. Maybe that's about to end. Maybe costs are coming down. What will I do with this? I will redouble my efforts to find something I like about McDonald's(MCD Quote - Cramer on MCD - Stock Picks) because it fits. I will look at others in the cohort. And I will wait for some of these to come down, so I can pounce.

Coors(RKY Quote - Cramer on RKY - Stock Picks), Brown-Forman (BF.A Quote - Cramer on BF.A - Stock Picks) and Anheuser-Busch (BUD Quote - Cramer on BUD - Stock Picks) also make the list. These are recession stocks, as are the plethora of tobacco stocks that find there way on the list. I had thought that the tobacco stocks were going up because of a potential Bush victory, but now I think they are going up because they hold up well when the economy slows. I feel that way because I don't sense that Gore is any more or less positive for alcohol than Bush. When both these groups go up simultaneously, that is a sign that people think that we could be headed into a recession. Wouldn't shock me considering the anemic profit figures we have been seeing lately. I will buy more Philip Morris (MO Quote - Cramer on MO - Stock Picks) today, but then again, I always buy more Philip Morris.

Defense stocks keep going higher. That's a Bush victory play, plain and simple. These stocks, if you believe that Bush's rhetoric will develop into increased military spending, can still be bought because they have been down for years. General Dynamics(GD Quote - Cramer on GD - Stock Picks) and Raytheon (RTN.A Quote - Cramer on RTN.A - Stock Picks) would make the most sense, the former being a well-run company that can go up over time, the latter being a poorly run company that could benefit from a change in government. Anything remotely connected with aerospace seems to be working, too.

Defensive stocks, not defense stocks, pretty much make up the rest of the list. International Game's (IGT Quote - Cramer on IGT - Stock Picks) there because people gamble in a recession. The utilities are there in spades because people still use them in a recession. The one group that seems to be less in abundance than I would expect is health care. Cardinal(CAH Quote - Cramer on CAH - Stock Picks) is there and so is Bergen Brunswig(BBC Quote - Cramer on BBC - Stock Picks) and Abbott Labs(ABT Quote - Cramer on ABT - Stock Picks), but I bet there should be more medical-related equities on the list. I am going to hunt for some likely ones today.

Finally, there is a preponderance of housing stocks, Toll Brothers(TOL Quote - Cramer on TOL - Stock Picks) and Pulte(PHM Quote - Cramer on PHM - Stock Picks) to name two visible ones on the New High list. That could be a definite sign of a further decline in interest rates. If I could find some savings and loans that are doing well with little credit risk, they might fit the profile of what is working, too.

How foolproof is the New High list? It has its flaws. It is a distinctly rearview mirror: The list is made up of stocks that have already done well. I like it better for its correlatives than for itself. (McDonald's, anybody?) And I don't want to lose sight that we are in one of those moments when tech wants to go higher for a couple of days. We have to try to build off of Friday's tech rally, because that tends to be what we do.

I find it tiresome. I would rather buy these New High stocks as they come down off the mini-rotation into tech than buy into tech, betting that the fundamentals have suddenly gotten better. I don't like to out-think the market. The market is speaking through the tongue of the New High list, and it is speaking loudly. Be defensive. Don't try to shoot the lights out. Rotate out of the stuff that has faltering fundamentals and into safety. I do what the market says, even when it isn't very sexy or fun or wildly profitable. And I stay alive until things get better.