Long term (no pun intended), the secular trend of bandwidth growth as an investing thesis is what makes me feel comfortable having my portfolio way outsized in the sector, with ALU, CIEN, INFN. I don't know (and haven't seen, aside from the regular announcement of deals of achievements for INFN) what is driving INFN's 4% pop today (CIEN and ALU up but less so), but I took the opportunity to sell some covered calls Dec. 18th stk 22 for .80 cents. About 1/2 my current position. (Mindful of your flexible but approximate valuation that above 20 it's rich, below 20 it's probably a buy.) Still can't decide whether to sell CIEN calls for Dec. 4th (wimpy return, but if it finishes OTM, the premium for the Dec. 11th calls are sweet, given that earnings are Dec. 10th) or just sell calls after Dec. 10th. Trying to make sense of these moves will just drive you nuts, as whatever drives this sector-wide beta, often on a daily basis is invisible, as far as I can tell. Might as well be in Vegas choosing Red or Black.

On IoT, I fail to understand why there isn't more concern about the possibility of terrorist cyber attacks. If driver-less cars were the standard, accelerating cars to 100 mph (well, if they're electric, maybe 75 mph), and disabling the brakes - one could probably kill not thousands of people (as did 911), but hundreds of thousands of people. Or, estimates are that if the whole power grid was taken down, and couldn't be repaired for 9 months to a year, the majority of people in the US would be dead by then. (Now *there's* an argument for 2nd amendment gun rights - you're the only guy in your neighborhood who stocked away canned food and your neighbors are at your door. And they're not just asking to borrow a cup of sugar.) Ted Koppel was was interviewed on Charlie Rose, since he has just published a book on that danger, after Koppel interviewing govt. officials on preparedness for a power grid take-down, and he 'discovered' this problem and advised people to stock a 6 month supply of food and water. And he calls his 'discovery' news. James Barrett spoke in depth about this problem in his 2012 book "Our Final Invention - Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era." Koppel could've saved himself a ton of time if he had just read the damn book. Altho it is a good thing to see this danger starting to be introduced in public awareness.

One could argue that IoT systems could be programmed to be 'fail safe' and unhackable. Seems a very dubious argument to me: Three Mile Island, Chernoble, Fukishima were all presumed to be programmed 'failsafe' systems. And if Anonymous can hack virtually any government site, why can't a terrorist with excellent computer skills do the same with 'secured' IoT systems?  Asimov's 3 laws of robotics to protect human life make for good science fiction, but that's about it. And how is it possible that someone can cause the DOW to crash 1000 points in order to profit from it? End of Screed. Can't help it - I find that stuff fascinating.