Cramer's 'Mad Money' Recap: Jan. 5

Cramer said there are two things to love about HP. First, he said, the company is only getting stronger as competitors like Dell (DELL Quote) race to cut costs and match HP's retail dominance.

Cramer said HP is more diversified than Dell, with 40% of its sales coming from enterprise, 30% from small- to mid-size businesses and the remaining 30% from consumers.

Cramer said he's also a fan of the company's acquisition of EDS, which allows the company to further diversify into IT services, while aggressively cutting costs. With 2,300 layoffs already on the books at EDS and more on the way, Cramer said a good 2009 is almost built in for HP.

Cramer said he'd be a seller of competitor IBM (IBM Quote) and would make Hewlett his favorite technology play.

Outrage of the Day

Cramer sounded off about what he called "the outrage of the decade," the SEC's investigation of Bernie Madoff's investment group.

Madoff had been investigated no less than eight times in the last 16 years, and each time the SEC found only minor infractions. Yet Cramer said his own simple analysis of Madoff's strategy quickly showed the results to be bogus. "Anyone with Microsoft Excel could've figured this out," he said.

Cramer said analyzing the strategy Madoff allegedly used from 2000 to 2008 resulted in a net loss of 2.66%. Stripping off all of 2008, the fund only had a total return of 23%, not the double-digit annual return Madoff claimed.

Cramer said it was clear that Madoff's strategy just "stunk," but what was not clear was why the SEC looked at only four days worth of trading records rather than the nine years worth Cramer was able to analyze.