Cramer Declares the Friday Curse Dead

We have smashed the Friday curse.

Believe me. Even as everyone gets all excited about the Friday curse, it is done. We are now set to run again.

How do I know? Just look at the chart of this Friday against last Friday. This time, instead of going straight down at 3 p.m., we went straight up! The spirited last half hour rally left traders in a buoyant mood. Remember last Friday. We were all reaching for razors during the last 30 minutes.

But that's not why today was so important - nor is that why today will be so remembered. Today will be remembered as Kurlak versus Edelstone in the battle for

Intel's

soul. Kurlak, the

Merrill

analyst, weighed in against Intel and his call rocked not just the chip giant, but the entire tech sector. Edelstone, the new

Morgan Stanley

analyst, debuted by declaring Kurlak's view as Wrong! It was a vintage analyst face-off. And from the looks of things, Edelstone -- and Intel -- won.

Friday reminded me of that brutal day last summer when I allowed the crew of

Frontline

to film my operation. They caught me on tape making a series of errors that probably set my firm back 2 or 3%. On that day

Smith Barney

downgraded Intel and the stock broke down. But not for long. Intel put on a rally near the close that erased any doubts about the stock's future. I sold into the rally and then had to buy everything back, much higher, a few days later.

That downgrade marked a low that held up for the rest of the year. The market began a sustained rally and never looked back.

This time it was Kurlak's chance to take on the nation's best company. His downgrade sent the stock screaming down eight points in pre-market trading. But Edelstone, who had been bearish on Intel's prospects when he was at

Prudential

, started Intel with an outperform at Morgan-Dean Witter and made fairly positive comments about the stock on his conference call. It turns out the low of the day for Intel came before the market opened, after Kurlak's trashing but before Edelstone's push.

This time few were fooled. There was nothing substantive to the downgrade. No hidden weakness. No worry of a shortfall. It appeared to be simply an attempt to call a short-term top. If history repeats itself, and I think it will, we will get the same kind of rally in the wake of Kurlak's Intel downgrade that we got after Smith Barney's Intel downgrade last summer.

The fact that we could rally after this call, and rally in technology --

IBM

,

Compaq

and

Hewlett

all came back from hideous lows - tell me that it's time to get longer, particularly in technology.

I'll have more to say Monday morning. But with this new site, I just had to say something before I went off for the weekend!

James J. Cramer is manager of a hedge fund and co-chairman of

TheStreet.com

. His fund holds long positions in

Intel

,

Compaq

,

Hewlett

and

IBM

. Under no circumstances does the information in this column represent a recommendation to buy or sell stocks. Mr. Cramer's writings provide insights into the dynamics of money management and are not a solicitation for transactions. While he cannot provide investment advice or recommendations, he welcomes your feedback, emailed to

Jjcramerco@aol.com.