Buy Nokia, Prepare RIM's Grave

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Somebody out there probably still holds shares of Nortel Networks ( OTC) . It's really nothing to be ashamed of. I logged into an account I had been ignoring to find 29 shares next to the following listing: BORDERS GROUP MICHIGAN INC NO STOCKHOLDERS' EQUITY 01/12/2012. Stuff happens.

That said, I can only hope the volume I see come in on NRTLQ each day does not represent a fresh long play or some pathetic attempt to average down. Even Nortel itself advises investors to stay away:

As previously announced, Nortel does not expect that the Company's common shareholders or the NNL preferred shareholders will receive any value from the creditor protection proceedings and expects that the proceedings will result in the cancellation of these equity interests.

It would not shock me to see that boilerplate come from Nokia(NOK) or Research in Motion(RIMM) at some point over the next couple to a few years. At this juncture, both stocks represent highly speculative plays. Each company requires wholesale change or something else extraordinary to take place in the absence of such a turnaround if it expects to, once again, deliver results for shareholders.

Ingredients of a Turnaround

Domino's Pizza(DPZ) executed what will go down as one of the great turnarounds of our time. The company took to the extreme the first thing you need to do to chart a truly new course: A private and public acknowledgement that something is seriously wrong.

Domino's realized it required more than a tweak here and a tweak there. If you recall, Domino's basically told the world we suck!. It positioned an entire ad campaign around that reality. Domino's promised to get better. And it did.