Thats precisely where i want to start my game plan for next week, with a potential deal, namely at t buying time warner, something that david faber said could happen as soon as monday morning. Judging by the huge leap in time warner stock, its entirely possible this monumental possibly 80 billion deal could be announced 48 hours from now. That might be followed by another expected deal, qualcomm potentially buying nxp for 110. If these deals occur it will be a wild monday that might distract us from the biggest earnings week of the year. They could send ve cbs as well as all the Semiconductor Stocks that are small enough to get a bid, and im talking about everybody from skyworks to micron. Consolidation is a way of getting the bullish juices flowing. But lets not ice earnings. Monday morning we hear from kimberlyclark and vf corp. The market wasnt crazy about their quarters last time around. I think were looking at these companies way too shortterm because over time theyve given and dividends. But the market is in a what have you done for me lately mode right now, and the answer is not enough. Maybe the narrative will change, especially with vf corp as longtime ceo eric wiseman passes the baton to steve rendle. Speaking of passing the baton, sad to see Charlie Scharf depart from visa, but maybe well get a sense of what new ceo has to stay about the next steps for is titan. Not to make too much of this new ceo old ceo stuff, but caterpillar kicks things off on Tuesday Morning with outgoing ceo Doug Oberhelman presenting the numbers. Ive got to tell you i think doug has done a terrific, heroic job of managing the downturn that wiped out many other infrastructure and commodity related companies. I actually expect a pretty decent quarter. The industrials have fallen out of favor with investors because may be a little more immune to a slowdown, and its 3m. That reports before the open. The ceo has been able to reinvent the company through ingenuity. I think the pace of new product launches will drive earnings, but its still cyclical. It could still be under pressure. Tuesday, few companies are more venerable than procter gamble. Its done a lot of shuffling, but is it enough . I dont think the stock will power higher unless we hear more organic growth. We also hear from under armour. This stock has spent an awful power plays. I wonder if this isnt the quarter that can break the spell in a positive way. After the close tuesday, we get results from the Largest Company on earth, apple. And you know i expect a good number, and i always tell you dont trade it, own it. Aided by an increase in the Service Revenue stream that comes from so many different offerings that they now make available to iphone users, last quarter apple talked about people switching from competitors, even talked about samsung. I can only imagine it will give 7s spontaneous combustion issue. Apple overshadows everything. We know that. But well also hear from chipotle. I think many people are jumping the gun on the recovery here. While ive said the stock is putting in a bottom in part because of an aggressive buyback, we know from the history of past Health Scares that you may have to wait longer for a comeback. The work we have done shows it takes 18 months for a restaurant to get back on track after the kind of incidents that marred chipotle, which means the stock most likely wont begin to run until the middle of next year. I do think, though, that patience will be rewarded. Oh, and id be remiss not to mention at t itself because its supposed to report after the clos the company itself is doing well or if they need to buy time warner because of a potential slowdown in signups. Losing some business to sprint and tmobile. Wednesday starts with boeing and i urge you to wait for the Conference Call before you trade it. Theres a widespread perception that the aerospace cycle has run its course. Peaked, namely the wide bodies where theres a growing glut of planes. Narrow bodies, though, they cant make enough of them. Now, we dont know how boeing is faring in terms of its makeup of that order book. Thats why i say wait to hear the granularity of the Conference Call because if you get a good headline number but then they talk down bodies on the call, the wide ones, the stock could be opened up and then go down. I know comparisons erroneous, but they always seem to be made when we get results from cocacola as its former doppelganger pepsico blew away the numbers when it reported. Co pepsico is up nearly 6 . I think the comparison no longer relevant because pepsicos Snack Division now overshadows the beverage business, not so with cocacola. What could change cokes trajectory . Were going to have to wait and see. I dont see anything on the horizon now, though. We also hear from Norfolk Southern on wednesday. I find the rails fascinating. Csx delivered a superb number account. Either way, nobody gives you a better read on the u. S. Economy than the rails. Well listen in. Thursday has got a gazillion Companies Reporting, but i bet only three will capture the attention of all participants. Three that report after the close. Alphabet, amazon and twitter. I think alphabet, formerly known as google, has started to rekindle the mutual affection between itself and wall street, starting with reignition of the revenue stream from youtube. If you get that thing humming, it takes a lot of pressure off the mechanics of search pricing. Like everyone else, i amazon. Heaven forbid if it doesnt give us one. And also like everyone else, im expecting a worse one from twitter even as the stock ran up again today in expectation of still one more takeover bid. Hey, listen, if theyre buying time warner, im sure someone is going to craft a rumor story about twitter. It could be a real shocker if twitter sees a reacceleration of user growth or some good numbers off of that nfl happened in what seems like an aborted auction. Will they discuss it . Will salesforces name come up, or will they give us the heisman when it comes to the takeover talk . If i were on the Conference Call, ive got two things i would ask. What are you doing to control the troll problem, which i believe has severely limited the worth of the company, and two, how many of your 300plus million users are actually individuals with multiple accounts . I know i have trolls who have reappeared over and over and over and over again under new names. Does twitter count them each separately . Pretty interesting question, isnt it . Friday is oil day, exxon and chevron. Both companies have weathered the low price of crude with aplomb, but neither has done any big acquisitions. Do they believe in the opec deal come november . Do they see a continued price recovery . Are they increasing their capital budgets . Thats something that would make you want to buy schlumberger, quarter. Stay tuned, but that may be the trade for next week. Heres the bottom line. We only get four weeks of the year where this Many Companies report, and because the bandwidth of wall street is so stretched, lots of mistakes get made. Dont get taken in. Before you act, listen to the Conference Calls. Look at some notes, and be sure you know what the heck youre doing. Believe me, there are plenty of people who will take action on the first bite of all these companies, and very often, theyll turn out to be just plain wrong. Mark in massachusetts. Mark. Caller hi, jim. A big boston baked bean booyah to ya. Thats nice. Whats shakin . Caller im currently in 8point energy, and being that sunpower and first solar have a partnership with them, im wondering how the Class Action Lawsuit could impact 8point energy. Geez, i dont know. Look, i got to tell you. The best thing you can do here is stay away from all of them. Its just not the right place to really take that one off the table. How about ellis in arkansas, please. Ellis. Caller yes, jim. My stock is ppg, and i just wanted to know why the warning came out two weeks early before the Financial Report and it dropped 8. 3 . Why didnt they wait till the Financial Report come out to try to do this . Ellis, ill tell you they didnt because theyre an honest company, and the estimates were mu Company Reported. It was the right thing to do. They felt they had to preannounce. Bruce kamich from realmoney. Com wrote a pretty negative piece about the chart. I will say this. It is highly unusual for this company to miss. It hasnt missed in many years. Its been a solid straight shooter, but its not at the right level. I think its got to go down a little more before i can get excited about it. Ray in south carolina. Ray. Caller yes. Hey, thanks for taking my call, jim. Of course. Caller i bought allergan about a year ago for 293, at i kept it, and i just watched it drop. When it dropped to 230 back in, i think, march of this year, i bought again. Same thing. Now, in your crystal ball, should i keep it . Should i dump it . My Charitable Trust owns it. You can follow along. We always do a roundup at actionalertsplus. Com. In it, we are saying we dont expect anything near term to happen. Because of the election, this is just a very tough time to own the drug stocks. We think Brent Saunders is putting together a powerhouse. What happened before was allergan got caught up in a pfizer merger that the government nixed. I dont think the government should have nixed it, but thats neither here nor there. Allergan, i think, treads water. You cant really have a big position in a drug stock going into this election. All right. Weve got the busiest week of earnings season ahead of us, but dont get overwhelmed. Listen to the calls. Do your homework, and think carefully before doing any buying or selling you might regret later. On mad money tonight, two companies, two comparable quarters, two totally different im dissecting the response. Then is the action in Boston Beer Company driving you to drink . With analysts split on the companys prospects, ill help take the edge off. And ill tell you if you can still pour some gains into your portfolio. And can autozone kick into high gear . This stock has been in the red zone lately, but it outperforms the s p. Is it still a buy . Im putting you in the drivers seat. So stick with cramer. Second of mad money. Follow jimcramer on twitter. Have a question . Tweet cramer, madtweets. Send jim an email to madmoney cnbc. Com or give us a call at 1800743cnbc. Miss something . Head to madmoney. Cnbc. Com. Why are you checking your credit score . I wanna see if it changed. Credit scores dont change that much, do they . Really . Ill take it. Sir, your credit. Is great right . When was the last time you checked . Yeah, id better check my credit score. Here, try credit karma. Its free. All right. No more surprises. Credit karma. Give yourself some credit. What are these . What is it . Duck lips. Quack quack. Plastic surgery duck uh huh you are a backwards duck. Instead of quack, he says no, kcauq. Kcauq. Kcauqqq. Kcauuuu. Pampers. Unlike ordinary diapers with two layers, pampers have three absorbent layers to stay up to three times drier, so babies can sleep soundly all night. Can be simple and straightforward but other times it can be down right confusing. The banks for example are all pretty straightforward. They all reported strong numbers. However, other groups have been decidedly more mixed. Especially the rails and the industrials, where were getting incredibly divergent performances from companies most puzzling of all is when two Companies Report very similar numbers, but then their stocks do wildly different things. We got to talk about this. I want to talk about one of these situations so you understand better how the stock market works. Specifically im referring to danaher and Illinois Tool Works. Two excellent industrialfocused companies that reported fairly comparable quarters yesterday even as their stocks reacted by moving in radically opposite directions. While many industrials are reporting, these two are terrific reallife examples so i can school you on this, teach you, help you understand the process of stock valuation and evaluation. How do you explain the markets response to these two companies and can it tell us anything about the way earnings are being graded this reporting period . First a little background. The danaher of today is vastly different from the one of a year ago, thanks to the companys recent breakup. The old danaher was a diversified Industrial Operating a host of industries from dental products to Life Sciences to environmental identification, automation technologies. Over the summer, the company spun off almost all of its industrialfacing businesses as the new danaher kept the life science, dental, environmental, and product id businesses. Its still a conglomerate but a more focused one. How about the great Illinois Tool Works . This is more of a smokestack stock as the Company Makes specialized manufacturing equipment. Illinois tool works serves a variety of end markets from deep sea oil rigs to aerospace, infrastructure, health care, construction, autos, and even Wind Turbines and electronic devices. I should mention that ive been a fan of both these companies their stocks had behaved during this earnings season. Thats why i had to dig deeper. It didnt make sense. When you look at the numbers theyre very similar. Danaher reported a modest fivecent cent earnings beat off an 82cent basis with in line revenue, slightly stronger than expected fullyear guidance. Illinois tool works reported a modest onecent earnings beat off a 1. 49 basis with, again, inline revenue and slightly raised fullyear forecast. It could have been the same. Now, granted danahers numbers were a little bit better than itws, but in Broad Strokes these quarters were incredibly alike. Yet danaher rallied 3. 9 on the so how do we make sense of this action . Why did the market like the results from danaher even as it spurned the seemingly almost identical results from Illinois Tool Works . These are the things that always consume people that i get asked about all the time because theyre confused. Were solving that. With most things in life, there are obvious reasons and the real reasons. First off, its important to note that the stocks had performed very differently going into their quarters. Danaher was up more than 9 for the yeef nicely outpacing the s p 500. The fact is that Illinois Tool Works was up an astounding nearly 25 for the year, and thats a tremendous run. So all else equal, if the expectations are higher, than the stocks postquarter performance is likely to be weaker. Illinois tool works definitely had Higher Expectations by judging from that almost 25 run up. At the same time danahers numbers were somewhat better. One more obvious explanation. Unlike danaher, Illinois Tool Works provided organic revenue guidance and their forecast of flat to 2 growth for the next for Illinois Tool Works. It would have been great for a lot of other industrials we talked to. They were punished for providing more transparency in a way. Everything i said is true, but theres another deeper reason for the disparity between danahers Stock Performance yesterday and itws. At the end of the day, investors are starting to sour on this industrial cohort as a whole. Thats becoming a theme of this earnings period. Think about it. Weve seen this performance from united technologies, honeywell, generaec softening and the Federal Reserve looking like its going to tighten in december, the industrials become less attractive because they need at least a better economy to produce decent numbers. Illinois tool works is about as industrial as it gets. But danaher because of that recent spinoff has successfully distanced itself from the group. When danaher spun off fortive over the summer, the idea was to make the remaining business less cyclical, less industrial, more of a consistent growth play. Fortive got nearly all their industrial divisions. The danaher of today is really than anything else. And when the Company Reported yesterday, all of its businesses, every one, delivered slow and steady numbers. Core revenues grew by 3 , dental division up 3. 5 . Diagnostics was up 3 . Thats some real growth, and now danahers stock is finally getting credit for it. As president and ceo tom joyce put it in the Conference Call, so to wrap up, were pleased with our performance in the current macroeconomic environment. We taken to reshape our portfolio positions us well for stronger growth and value creation, end quote. I think hes absolutely right. Danaher has made itself less cyclical, and that puts them in a very good position right now. Illinois tools, its a quintessential industrial. They have seven segments and while the company saw marginal expansion at most of them, the three out of these seven businesses. Another one was flat. Three more saw revenue contractions like the welding division. Really when you draw down, these two quarters had less in common than it might seem at first glance. Fabulous company but one with super expectations that in the end is still an industrial. So heres the bottom line. Just because two companies in roughly the same category report seemingly similar numbers, that doesnt necessarily mean the situations are analogous. With danaher and Illinois Tool Works, you need to understand the context. The industrials are falling out of favor on the wall street fashion show. I think well see that next week off its industrial businesses while Illinois Tool Works was punished for being a