>New Focus stirs up a buzz
After enduring the sell-off that brought the entire Nasdaq plummeting back to reality, shares of New Focus (NUFO: news, msgs) hit the bull's-eye with a strong earnings report and heightened expectations on the future. See full story.
Subsequently, investors celebrated in fine cyber-style.
On Raging Bull, Optivity led the expected cheerleading: "Does this stock remind anyone of JDS Uniphase (JDSU: news, msgs) in '99? Quietly goes up without a ton of people noticing? CNBC looks over earnings a DAY LATE because NUFO is still widely unknown? Good story here."
High praise, indeed ... but it didn't stop there. FishPaul: "Easily to $75 soon! BEST stock to buy on Naz right now!"
And Avoid: "Been with this company since early in the IPO. I knew she was a winner! This is the next JDSU! Time to throw the kitchen sink at it. SCREAMING STRONG BUY!!!! I can't wait to hear the ANALists remark on NUFO!"
Now that's the message board mania I remember from way back in the day of weekly triple digit returns ... ah, I miss that ... so does my wife ... so will our unborn child unless the market starts heading northward.
Not everyone was completely gung-ho, however. Complete1 did his best to inject a sense of reality into the cyber-party: "Institutions will be selling into its strength. No fund manager wants to get stuck in a daytrader stock with millions of people and banks depending on his/her decisions. NUFO now trades simply on momentum and gambling instincts and not on the company fundamentals.
"NUFO is doing really well, exceptionally well recently, but it already gained over 20 points since last week. That's an increase of 1.3 Billion in market cap. That increase alone is more money than NUFO will generate in revenues over the next five years!"
Sycamore's sickly showing
On the other hand, shares of Sycamore Networks (SCMR: news, msgs) have been evaporating at a frightening pace all week ... and you needn't look at the stock's chart to figure that out; a surf through the message boards would certainly suffice.
MontyBurns aired his concerns over recent insider share dumps: "Since the selling alerts on Sycamore have come out, SCMR has collapsed after two double tops at 52 and at 41. It has broken below all MA support and never broke its downtrend line. While it is true that other fiber optic stocks have also come in since last week, I can find none that have imploded like SCMR. To ignore this information or to minimize its importance is to risk being burned very badly.
"Its P/E is still 'speculative' in its size. Such selling information does not instill a strong buyer interest for the stock. There are, after all, lots of high P/E fiber optic stocks with very bright futures with no evidence of recent selling by insiders."
"All Aboard" without anti-analyst rants? Not a chance.
You tell 'em, Wimberlj: "Alright, who in the #$% puts a downgrade on the stock when it has been getting hammered the past few months. Can we say these analysts all line up in a big straight line, and just follow the one in front of them. Tell me something new, and something to excite me. In the end, all the analysts, once again, look like a bunch of 'penguins' just standing in line waiting to follow the person in front of them."
This kind of frustration is more than understandable considering this $30 stock was once an uptick away from $200.
At any rate, the cheers and the tears continued to pile throughout the week as each stock headed towards opposite ends of the fiber optic spectrum.
Sycamore, held underwater in large part due to Wit SoundView's recent downgrade, couldn't even find the buyers in the wake of Wednesday's substantial Fed rate cut.
Not that the rest of the market could ... New Focus seemed to be the exception rather than the rule on the Nasdaq this week. |
