OT - CSCO - Did not delve into the details, but the quarter apparently was good enough to propel the stock to a 6%+ gain. Not clear to me why there would be such a disparity among networking stock results. Yes, I know  CSCO sells hardware such as routers, but my understanding is that this segment of their business should suffer. They made a foray into security software, and I think that's doing well, but wouldn't necessarily see it a a large part of their business, nor a large part of their success. The secret sauce?

Congrats to lt cap for a gutsy (seemed to me, altho he noted downside was limited) buy of INFN, which continues to rally, only stronger now, up 7%+ today. It would seem that scooping up shares in the mid  $6's may be seen as quite a coup down the road, if Fallon is right. He wasn't right the last 2 times he bought chunks of stock, but I'm guessing he saw limited downside and a way to boost the stock off multi-year lows, and so far, it's working like a charm.

And NOK is having a fine day, after drifting steadily lower. Could just be the happy feet the market has.

One thing that does puzzle me, which I'm not certain has a definite answer: The market is up almost 200 points today, so far. Walmart and Cisco are the named drivers. But quoted sources are saying it's on the hope of a passable tax plan. (Quoted sources can attribute anything to anything they like.) It used to be that the esteemed economists who made GDP projections would be wildly optimistic, a prediction of 3% for instance, and when we got there it would be a real growth number of .02%, or something equally anemic. Last quarter actually did come in at 3%. And the projections for this quarter are 2.8%. My puzzlement is this: Do the numbers mean anything, in the sense that they are reflecting real economic conditions/gains? There are two different issues here - one is the 'goodness' of predictions, which as Jester has pointed out for years, has been incredibly over-optimistic. The other is the 'goodness' of the numbers themselves - are they reflective of economic conditions and growth, or are they manipulated so much that they're not representative of anything?  That second question is important it seems to me, as if it is reflective of some reality, then that, plus earnings, might justify these dizzying stock valuations, no? Add in a tax plan that (if it occurs) might give corporations a 20% tax rate, and that seems a recipe for a large market 'melt up' from here. Correct me if I'm wrong, please.