Successful investing has, for many, felt more like a mirage than an oasis. The collapse in real estate prices has eroded homeowner equity. And the 20% declines in broad market benchmarks have substantially diminished retirement assets.

We made it through the worst of subprime... or so we had thought. We fought off a traditional recession... or so we had hoped. Yet we now find ourselves wondering if the new world "oil order" will snuff out the last flame.

The surge marked a solid recovery from the first quarter, when all 13 stocks we track lost ground (one company, Bladelogic, has since been acquired). Shares of data center companies were beaten up early in the year by concerns that the credit crunch and losses in the financial sector would lower demand for data center services.

First, it made a splash touting how its telecom gear is more energy efficient than Cisco’s (CSCO). Now, it’s enthusiastically promoting the benefits of teleworking - the idea you that can work from home to save time and, of course, energy.

We believe that current trends and dynamics within the telecom networking sector will make merchant providers of network processors—namely, Cavium (CAVM), Netlogic (NETL), and EZchip (a wholly owned subsidiary of LanOptics (EZCH))—relatively immune to macro-economic troubles.

At Friday’s close of $23.61, Cisco’s shares are down 69% from their all-time high of $77.31 and 31% from their 52-week high of $34.24, as most investors realize this will never be the great growth stock that it was a decade ago.

If we have a pipe that pushes a massive amount of content through there and we're not getting a return on that, it's probably not a good business for us.

Like The Wisdom of Clouds author James Urquhart, I was floored by the cloud computing meme explosion.  What was an initial comment about Who will Ride the Clouds was picked up by tech visionary Nicholas Carr Monday, in addition to several new media outlets.

In FY 2007 [ended March 2008] revenues grew marginally while EPS grew 11% going from $2.00 to $2.22. Each of the past two quarters showed year-over-year improvement and FY 2008 is projected to come in much stronger. Current FY estimates run from Value Line’s $2.90 to Zack’s $3.36 /share.

There has been a recent tug-of-war between analysts as Baird and Wachovia have recently downgraded the stock while the Bank of Montreal upped its forecast. The Correct Call is siding with the Canadians in this case. XRTX only trades at 9.72 times its forward earnings and .70 times sales. Both numbers seem fairly low for XRTX as it is expected to grow the bottom line by more than 40% in the next 12 months.

Ellis's move is understandable, in light of flash prices which appear to be in a state of freefall, and macro economic concerns worldwide, but at its current price, Ellis appears to have locked the stable door with the horses having already bolted, unless he knows something that we don't. Back in March, an analyst from JP Morgan lowered his recommendation and price target to around $20, and the stock duly rebounded to $33.

He mentioned a few of us security bloggers and talked about how long it will take before virtsec takes off and why.  I think our “pragmatist” has really confused vision and tech strategy with market sizing. 

3Com Corporation (COMS)

F3Q08 Earnings Call

F4Q08 Earnings Call

When spice trade routes shifted to the ocean the overall Middle East economy went from optimism to despair, from science and enlightenment to xenophobia.  Factories gradually replaced artisans around the world and agriculture went through a series of cycles depending on access to trade routes and distances from markets (in addition to weather and practices, etc).  A coming shift to cloud computing could be as influential in wealth distribution as any previous shift in factors of production and access.

Market cap: $12.7 billion; Enterprise Value: $10.5B billion

According to a press release, the charges “pertain to allegations of criminal activity within Nortel Networks during 2002 and 2003.″

Hutchinson this morning repeated his Buy rating on the stock, and raising his target price to $20 from $18. “Our checks indicate that business is tracking well in Q2 and is much less back-end loaded than the disappointing March quarter,” he writes. “Although the overall environment remains sluggish, we believe Riverbed has secured a handful of large deals, including an order with the federal government.”

This is the first time Warrior will grab the spotlight at a big Cisco event. According to my sources close to Cisco, here are five themes to expect from Warrior and Cisco CEO John Chambers during the customer rally:

Cisco suggests traffic on the world’s networks will jump 46% a year from 2007 to 2012. In 2012, Cisco claims Internet video traffic will be a staggering 400x carried on the U.S. Internet backbone in 2000. Video-on-demand, IP-TV, P2P and Internet video will account for 90% of all consumer IP traffic in 2012.