July 26th - Cool Stocks and Tech M&A

Cramer opened his show talking about what really defines a stock price, and for once he said it wasn't just fundamentals...its "coolness". The more popular or cool a stock is, it will generally get a higher multiple, and therefore a higher price per share. He threw out a few stock names like HPQ, GM, WMFI, BBY, ZUMZ, SBUX, NWS and VFC that are cool, but didn't really focus on anything enough to prompt any buying after hours.

Cramer's next segment looked at the tech sector and the M&A activity that has been occurring recently. He listed 10 potential takeover targets as speculative buys. The picks were:

BRCM Broadcom Corp. $22.02 up $0.13 AH
WDC Western Digital Corp. $16.85
PALM Palm, Inc. $14.95 up $0.15 AH
WIND Wind River Systems Inc. $8.14 up $0.10 AH
WBSN Websense Inc. $18.47
BEAS BEA Systems Inc. $11.91 up $0.20 AH
TIBX Tibco Software Inc. $7.68 up $0.07 AH
FILE FileNet Corporation $31.08
AVID Avid Technology Inc. $34.61
ACTI ActivIdentity Corp. $4.55 up $0.24 AH

Not too shocking to see that the cheapest stock got the highest move after hours in ACTI but unfortunately it was after the show finished and on only 400 shares. Hard to get a short in at that level if there aren't enough buyers. BRCM traded a lot after hours, but not from the Cramer watchers as it was trading before the show aired. PALM broke through $15 after hours and held but on only 700 shares or so. WIND had a few trades and is another stock under $10 that might be worth a look with some early volume. BEAS had 2 bigish trades of 1600 and 2500 trades after hours at $12.00. It is a heavily traded stock though so I doubt there can be much Cramer effect. TIBX only had 1 trade while the show was on and only went up slightly. Strangely tonight there were several trades just after the show finished. I wonder if it was people that noticed there wasn't much run up and saw it as an opportunity to buy. Maybe someone that hasn't been watching the last little while and wasn't used to the lame after hours action we have been having.