RealMoney Radio: Tech's Low Bar

07/24/06 - 02:01 PM EDT

TheStreet.com Staff

The tech fairy tale should not be forgotten, Jim Cramer told his "RealMoney" radio listeners on Monday.

"Once upon a time, techs were rulers of the financial universe," Cramer said. "Anything dot-com, anything PC-related, anything Internet, anything web-based, anything software, really, anything fiber optic ... they always made you feel like you were in the right place at the right time.

"But then it fell apart," and the sector has had a tough time recovering from the big bubble kaboom.

However, Cramer believes things will change for tech stocks this fall for several reasons, including the fact that Microsoft(MSFT Quote - Cramer on MSFT - Stock Picks) is getting closer to launching its Vista operating System, and there are two new gaming systems coming from Sony and Nintendo.

This is good news, but not the best reason to buy these stocks, Cramer said. The negative sentiment has lowered expectations for these stocks, so companies are more likely to beat next quarter's earnings, he said. And Wall Street buys and sells stocks based on whether they can beat their earnings estimates.

"It is the dream of every investor to get in on the ground floor of a market craze and ride it higher," Cramer told listeners. That's the sentiment that is driving interest in the digital world, he said, pointing out that newspapers and television companies are trying to get a foothold in the online, digital interactive world."

Having been there and done that by building TheStreet.com, he said that the digital world is not going to be a lifejacket for the big media companies.

"It doesn't have any sort of gravitas internally," he said. The New York Times has "developed the finest Web site of any newspaper in the country," he said, but its Web push still is not as valuable to its bottom line as its print ad business.

The same is true for Scripps and Disney. Even though all of these companies have made major Web pushes, these efforts didn't matter to their underlying businesses when it came time to report their quarters.

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