Jim Cramer's Best Blogs

It hung on. The merger with Alcatel was meant to make it so it could win as much business in Europe as it did here. But new technologies were liked there, too. The brand name? The finest brand name in the world, Bell Labs? It became like Kodak. The patents? They have millions of them. All of those Nobel Prize winners!

But the patents are for equipment that's been obviated years ago.

Now it is true that you could have been a buyer of Alcatel-Lucent all the way down. You may still be a buyer. There were so many reasons to do so, just as there are with Nokia or Research In Motion or Hewlett-Packard.

There's value all over the place.

But in the end once you have that vortex it is almost impossible to break out of it. Of the tech stocks that I follow that got into a tailspin, the only one that I have seen rescue itself in this era is Sprint (S), and that turned out to be a monumental effort that people are still betting against. Worse, unless you bought it at $2 or $3 or maybe $4 you lost money anyway!

One last thing. Throughout this period many thought Lucent and then Alcatel-Lucent had to make it because if the balance sheet. It always had a good balance sheet, always managed the cash well. So, there were no worries. That's what made me laugh about Alcatel-Lucent's frantic bid to get a lifeline from Goldman Sachs. In the end, the cash always goes, too.

Action Alerts PLUS, which Cramer co-manages as a charitable trust, has no positions in stocks mentioned.

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Two Growth Stocks Restore the Market's Faith

Posted at 10:08 a.m. EDT on Wednesday, Nov. 21

High-multiple heaven! Thank you, Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG), with your accelerated share repurchasing showing how cheap you really are. Thank you, Salesforce.com (CRM), for delivering a quarter that is led by strength in Germany and France!

Sometimes we can't remember why we like growth stocks. Sometimes because it has been hellish, frankly, ever since Chipotle dropped 100 points in a day. Now it seems to have stabilized, and that can lead one to the conclusion that another part of the bear -- the relentless compression of the high-multiple plays -- may be running its course.

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