Palm stock upgraded; Cramer completes opinion reversal 22
Thu, 08 Oct 2009 5:15 pm EDT
Standing in stark contrast to many of his earlier calls on Palm, Jim Cramer of CNBC’s Mad Money has executed a complete 180 on the stock and now endorses it as a buy (albeit speculative) on the long-term prospects of smartphone adoption. Says Cramer, “There’s a lot of dispute about whether Verizon will support Palm; I think they will. Right now Sprint supports Palm. I think once Palm gets applications you’ll be in good shape. ... I think Palm is a long term winner in the ‘internet tsunami,’ I bless it.” Too bad he didn’t see the potential in Palm earlier and kept many out of the stock when it was still dirt cheap.
Cramer’s not alone in the Palm love, with investment bank Piper Jaffray maintaining their “overweight” (buy more) rating on the stock. Piper Jaffray also raised their price target for Palm from $18 to $24. An analyst with the bank said:
“We believe webOS provides Palm the ability to incorporate a high level of integration between hardware and software elements in its handsets, thus providing a very compelling user experience. Further, with the convergence of the Web and mobile phones, we believe webOS is gaining developer interest and Palm has a unique strategy to attract developers to the platform through enabling developers to market their applications. We anticipate strong growth in the developer ecosystem as Palm ships a family of webOS products longer-term.”
Palm closed Thursday at $17.01, up $0.57 (3.47%) for the day. From the $1.42 low on December 5, 2008, Palm is up a stunning 1098%. Year-to-date, Palm is up 454%.
Thanks to Sharon for the tip!
22 Comments
Power to Palm!
Just wish I had I had money at the time to invest at $1.42 a share. DOH!
It's great he likes PALM and everything but this guy is some kind of joke right?
In all honesty i don't think he's a joke. i did think he was flat wrong with his original point. I've read some of his books. It's full of sound intelligent advice on how to do research, how markets work, things average investors need to pay attention to and to avoid. And compared to nearly every other pundit on CNBC bluster wall street insider speak, he's probably the most sensible investor. In fact that whole network was down on Palm. His show is a mix of entertainment and show with decent advice and opinion. But if you take his advice from his very own mouth he says over and over that just cause he says something, don't just run out and buy or sell. Go do the homework and do the research and decide for yourself because he could be wrong. I think he gives people tools and then he makes his decision and says to people you got the tools go use them and see if you agree with me then decide. I think his issue on Palm like on other things, is that he did his research and his research was that moron that based his Palm opinion on a precentral poll. I objected to his opinion and even sent Deiter a link to a post rebutting his claim about tons of Pre returns. I took Cramer's advice, did my own research, better research, concluded he was wrong. I bought more Palm stock a few days later for a healthy profit. I think he didn't do follow his advice and do good homework. Here's the rub though. the stock was around 14 or so when he said he didn't like it. if you sold then, it went up to around 16 something then fell back to 14 before earnings. And i do believe he changed his mind right at 14 give or take half a point. it popped, fell to 13, he still said buy, and popped back again after earnings. Point is if you sold when he said sell you lost nothing, and if you bought when he said buy, you're up 20% percent. Like i said i even posted that he was wrong if you took his advice you'd have missed a lot of the preearnings volitity and be up a nice profit after he changed his mind. From that perspective, his advice, though not correct would have lost you little and earned you a good profit. That's why i don't think he's a joke. But i'm smart enough to recognize an error in his thinking and i'm smart enough to think for myself.
He may be funny, but he's no joke. Like every other advisor, though, none of them are correct 100% of the time--not even Warren Buffet. Nobody knows more about Palm & the Pre then the people right here on this Forum. I know no investor knows more about my industry than many of us in that industry. Usually, he & others depend on their research (the financials) & the Mgmt teams & their interviews. He was very sloppy on his Palm research previously. I hope he did a better job this time.
Yes, he is a joke. Jon Stewart rightly and easily tore him apart on The Daily Show. He's just sleeze.
+1
While I'm happy to have Jim help move up Palm stock, I still have no use for him.
I still can't hear him, I think he needs to speak up...
ya he is beyond annoying, his show seems like the business version of around the horn on espn to me. He is just too loud, annoying for me!
i think he's like John Madden. his style isn't not for everybody. That said i think Around the Horn is a wrong analogy. Around the Horn and like PTI are shows where a panel gives opinions on a sports topic. I think thats more like Fast Money, or Closing Bell or Kudlow where they go "next topic Palm, hey joe what do you think." I think his show is basically a radio call in talk show filmed on camera. He discusses the days news briefly takes calls and opinions and gives some advice.
But i think his in your face style rubs people the wrong way like John Madden's announcing does. Madden is a blow hard. I don't think he's a complete idiot though. Just a partial idiot.
Actually, John Madden is cool. Cramer is not.
The guy is sort of a joke in terms of his show (which I occassionally watch), but he is actually a decent stock investor with quality
My only fear is just before the wall street banking collapse he did list some of the failed companies as buys.
Everybody was recommending that. ;-)
i get ya. everybody was though. And he bailed on a lot of stuff very early. even told people not to be in the market at times. All investors take losses so i gotta figure it's to be expected that he'd be wrong some time.
Good thing I bought 500 shares in palm, (its a game for school, not real) but I'm dominating.
Good lord this guy is annoying... It's like he stole Bill Nye's science lab and decided it was better suited for slamming buttons and yelling about money.
Jon Stewart kicked this guy's other shiny round sweaty body part over his failure to predict the market implosion: he's better read, than heard.
So Derek, are you giving any reconsideration to your proclamation that Palm is overpriced?
I believe so, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have the potential to rise much further. You buy stocks not because you think the company will do well - you buy stocks because you think the stock will do well, and all things considered it looks like PALM will continue to rise.
I purchased some shares after I purchased my phone on release day, and learned what a great product Palm had created..I think its only going to grow in value over time...probably time to buy some more now that I think about it!
He is a poor analyst (a joke) in my mind. Its not about being right or wrong (its difficult to be right most of the time) its about doing your job well
As an analyst his job is to gather good and sufficient data and analyse !
He did both badly and I suspect this isn't the first time.
I am not bothered by his style, nothing wrong with showboating in my mind but when you stick yourself in line of the public gaze you should take even more care to deliver a quality job or you run the risk of being thought of as a clown.
When I first saw his show my teenage son was watching it and I said to him "Man, Jim Cramer's back and he's gone nuts." I asked him how he could watch that and he said he actually enjoyed it. This is coming from a kid with no real interest in stocks and a genius IQ and a sense of humor that would kick anyone's butt. So there it would be on TV in the background when I got home from work, and then I started to listen.
Having been an online investor on my own for some seven years before this show, I noticed he was making some very, very valid points and observations. And from then on I started to watch regularly. I now subscribe to his Real Money site where a multitude of highly credentialed analysts discuss the market in real time as does Jim. He's good. Sorry, he acts the buffoon and he knows it, he does it intentionally to make the show fun and not just talking head stuff.
Does he get things wrong? Hell yeah. Everybody does. There are no entirely prescient analysts, but he's more right on market direction and where the smart money is going than most I've seen.
The Daily Show clips were hysterical, but many were taken out of context and time. The thing is doesn't anyone remember him going hysterical in August 2008? The "they know nothing" speech when discussing the Fed and their utter misunderstanding of what was happening with the banks was amazing albeit symptomatic of his bi-polar disorder. It was famous. Look it up on YouTube. That was just one month before everything went to hell and the Fed still thought there wasn't a problem. A month after that speech Jim told everyone to sell every stock whose money they might need access to in the next five years. That would be the month of the Lehman collapse, and the day the earth stood still as Paulson called an emergency meeting with Congress for emergency aid to the banks.
What most people don't know is that a breaking of the buck had occurred in the oldest money market fund. This NEVER happens. Money market funds all over were experiencing a run on the banks, and were being drained to the tune of billions an hour.
Yeah, Jim may never be always right, but a call to get out of the market then is almost worth every wrong call he's ever made. So, I give him some leeway on PALM given the wide range of stocks that he covers. And he did get the mobile internet tsunami call 100% right.