The Juniper Question

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Juniper Networks(JNPR Quote - Cramer on JNPR - Stock Picks) rallied 29 points on Friday. That's a 30% move, a beautiful move for a terrific company. If you were long Juniper, you made out terrifically. If you bought Juniper on Thursday at the low, you could have racked up thousands of dollars in gains on a very small amount of shares.

And yet I found the move completely perplexing, if not downright negative. Because I don't know if we can still have moves like those and not face worse times for that portion of the stock market people remain juiced about.

I want to walk you through my thought process because it's one of the sticking points I have about whether everything has bottomed or whether just large portions of the nontech stock market have bottomed.

First, let's start with Juniper, the company. I think this company is doing extremely well and is managed by one of the best managements I have ever seen. They are the envy of all tech companies, but particularly companies in the highest end of networking equipment. Second, Juniper has seen no signs of a slowdown as of the last conference call. So this is not a company that I expect to preannounce bad earnings. Like all companies in the telecom space, they may face problems from defaulting telcos down the road but right now, at least, they seem fine.

Third, let's talk about Juniper, the stock, because that's what TheStreet.com is about. I think Juniper's stock is overvalued relative to previous levels of valuation before all of this New Economy stuff got started. I also think it's overvalued relative to other companies in technology and in its particular area of technology.

That didn't mean a thing to me for about 18 months. But it does now. I don't want to own stocks that are wildly overvalued against the rest of the market because if the growth -- the underpinning of the valuation -- slows down, then Juniper is slaughtered. I can't have that.

However, there is a sizable portion of the money management community, both individuals trading Nasdaq Level II trading and mutual funds, that seems to have gotten inured to valuation. I know this because to them, Juniper at $90 and Juniper at $130 is the same stock. I think that's wrong. At a certain point Juniper has to be sold, I think, because it's too expensive.

That idea is still not embraced by enough people. I know this because when Juniper was up 29 points today, nobody came in and took profits. It didn't sell off.

What I'm asking myself is how can we have a bottom with the likes of a Juniper when it can still go up 29 points in one session? Isn't that a sign that the speculative excess is still out there? Or did Juniper simply reach a level that was so low last week as to make it a must-own even 30 points higher? Can stocks spike like this and we believe that the bear market is over?

I wish I had the answers. But this will be my major focus in the coming week.