Cramer's 'Mad Money' Recap: Secrets of the Stock Market

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Sometimes the secrets behind stock market rallies aren't really secrets at all, Jim Cramer told "Mad Money" viewers Thursday.

He said it's clear there are three sectors driving the markets higher: the industrials, technology and everything oil and gas.

Cramer said while some investors are focusing on the "as goes January, so goes the year" theorem, he'd rather focus on what's working.

Take the industrials. It's no secret the industrials had been lagging as the U.S. stagnated, Europe was thrown into recession and China took a pause. But now that the U.S. is growing again, Europe is on the rebound and China is once again gearing up, it's no wonder Whirlpool (WHR) is at a 52-week high. Housing is on fire, said Cramer, which is driving every stock that goes into a home as well as every diversified industrial company.

Then there's tech. Apple (AAPL) may be lagging, but new techs like Google (GOOG) and Facebook (FB) are picking up the slack, as are all of the cloud computing players.

Finally, there's oil and gas. The American oil and gas revolution cannot be stopped, said Cramer, as evidenced by the 8.9% jump in Core Laboratories (CLB) . America is producing more oil than it has in 15 years, yet according to Core Labs, there still may be one or even two huge oil shale fields that we have yet to discover.

Cramer said that usually there is narrow leadership in January, but this year there are many big themes sending the markets higher. Investors only need to look around.

Executive Decision

In the "Executive Decision" segment, Cramer sat down with Bill McDermott, co-CEO of SAP (SAP) , a stock that took a hit when it offered preliminary earnings on Jan. 15, only to come roaring back when the full earnings followed. Shares of SAP are up 64% since Cramer first got behind the stock and are now trading just off their 52-week high.