• Boeing's (NYSE:BA) new head of its commercial aircraft division, Jim Albaugh, said the long-awaited Dreamliner test will happen by yearend

• Citigroup (NYSE:C) plans to sell Bellsystem 24, a Japanese telemarketing company, to Bain Capital for $1 billion, bringing to $10.8 billion the dollar amount Citi has raised from sales of Japanese assets

• Hedge fund Paulson & Co. reported in a September 30 filing Citigroup (NYSE:C) holdings of 300 million shares, valued at $1.45 billion

• Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) raised its bid for Tandberg ASA to $3.4 billion, or about an 11% increase, and extended its offer to December 1

• According to a Bloomberg report, Mitsubishi UFJ has hired JP Morgan (NYSE:JPM) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) to manage an $11 billion secondary offering, Japan's largest ever. The company plans to sell about 2.5 billion common shares

• Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE:BMY) said it plans to spin off its 83% stake in Mead Johnson Nutrition

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We have just launched with a brand new a href="http://www.zignals.com/main/trading_system/trading_system.aspx"Trading System/a builder which will allow you to create your own trading strategies and follow the trade signals generated via email. You will eventually have the opportunity to earn money selling it in the a href="http://www.zignals.com/main/trading_strategies/market_trading_strategies.aspx"Zignals MarketPlace/a. If you would like to read more about our Trading System builder you can do so a href="http://www.zignals.com/main/trading_system/trading_system_help.aspx"here/a. br /br /But first things first; FREE registration with Zignals followed by a prompt to download Microsoft's Silverlight will give access to the trading strategy builder. For this article I am working through the Zignals a href="http://www.zignals.com/main/dashboard/dashboard.aspx"Dashboard/a which gives full access to all of our services (a href="http://www.zignals.com/main/stock_alerts/stock_alerts.aspx"stock alerts/a, a href="http://www.zignals.com/main/stock_charts/stock_charts.aspx"stock charts/a, a href="http://www.zignals.com/main/stock_screener/stock_screener.aspx"stock screener/a and a href="http://www.zignals.com/main/portfolio_manager/portfolio_manager.aspx"portfolio manager/a) within a single application. The key advantage of using this over the individual applications is the seamless switching between applications. br /br /We shall start with a ...

Companies featured in this edition of the newsletter: ACTC, CHIP, CVM, DKAM, ENZ, IWEB, MBCI, MFGD, PHC

Markets rebounded last week, on the strength of upbeat productivity and manufacturing reports that led to solid gains in all of the major indices. Despite news that the unemployment rate had hit its highest levels in 25 years, the Dow managed to end the week up 310 points, gaining 3.2% on the week to close at 10,023, up 14.2% on the year. The Nasdaq posted a gain of 3.3%, closing at 2112 and extending its yearly gains to 34%, while the S&P 500 and Russell 2000 advanced 3.2% and 3.1% respectively on the week to bring their YTD performance to 18.4% and 16.2%.

Several better than expected economic reports provided buying incentive throughout much of the week, as investors managed to shake off the previous week’s negative bias to send indices into positive territory

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3Com Corp. (COMS) is in the news for winning new business deals across geographies. The first one of them is the “Brazil's Airport Administration" deal, where 3Com and its H3C enterprise networking solutions will provide the network infrastructure for the network upgrade project of 11 main airports in Brazil. Under this project, 3Com will be upgrading the wired and wireless network of the Airport, in order to support the increasing traffic of passengers and employees.  This upgrade of Brazil Airports is expected to improve the performance on data, voice and video applications used for flight information systems, air traffic control, surveillance and IP telephony systems substantially, while reducing the total networking cost considerably.

3Com had another win at the South African government’s Social Security Agency (SASSA), wherein SASSA has opted for a distributed network of H3C and 3Com-branded solutions to run its vast social security grant system across the

...

Cisco Systems’ (CSCO) first quarter 2010 earnings beat the Zacks consensus by 13 cents. Revenue beat by 3.1%. Both revenue and EPS were significantly better than the guided range. Revenue Revenue of $9.02 billion was up 5.7% sequentially and down 12.7% year over year. Revenue was at the high-end of management’s guidance range of a year-over-year decline of 15-17%. Products generated 80% of revenue, increasing 7.0% sequentially and declining 16.6% year over year. Order rates also strengthened, particularly in the U.S. , indicating continued revenue growth in the next quarter. Management stated that the company saw bottom in the fiscal fourth quarter, with improvement in the first. Results are likely to trend upward going forward. Around 55% of total revenue was generated in the U.S. & Canada (up 5.1% sequentially), 20% came from Europe (up 9.3%), ...

Avnet, Inc. (AVT) recently announced that it has acquired a controlling interest in Vanda Group from Hutchinson Whampoa Limited in a strategic move to expand its presence and customer base across China. Vanda Group will operate as an Avnet company while maintaining its current operations, management team and the Vanda brand. Vanda Group is a leading IT solutions and services provider covering major cities in China, Hong Kong and Macau, and has been around 27 years. Vanda Group provides systems integration services and solutions incorporating hardware and software from major suppliers including IBM (IBM), Lenovo, Cisco (CSCO), Sun (JAVA), Nokia (NOK) and Oracle (ORCL). The company serves clients from diverse industries including major banks, financial institutions, telecommunications companies, utilities and government departments. Vanda Group generated revenues of approximately $50 million in 2008 and employs more than 600 people. The transaction will ...

• Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) initiated coverage of Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) with an "outperform" rating, believing it attractive for a play on an IT spending recovery

• JP Morgan (NYSE:JPM) reported better-than-expected third quarter earnings of 82 cents a share, up from 9 cents a year ago, and ahead of Zacks estimates of 49 cents a share on strong underwriting revenues

• Altera (NASDAQ:ALTR) reported inline quarterly earnings of 19 cents a share, down from 31 cents a share a year ago on revenues of $268 million, which missed estimates of $282 million

• Piper Jaffray (NYSE:PJC) raised its price target on Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) to $26 from $21

• Host Hotels (NYSE:HST) reported third quarter earnings of 11 cents a share, ahead of Zacks estimates of 8 cents a share, on revenues of $912 million

Zacks Investment Research

Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. (JLL), a leading real estate investment trust (REIT), recently reasserted its strategic alliance with Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO), a premier global Internet networking services company, and further extended it for five years. The mutually beneficial partnership encompasses transaction management, lease administration, and surplus property management services of the 24 million square feet global portfolio of Cisco. The deal strengthens Jones Lang’s position in the market and offers it an expanded role in the operations of Cisco. Jones Lang had been delivering real estate services to Cisco since 2001. The company offered an established global platform, resources, and expertise that enabled Cisco’s Workplace Resources Group to attain operational excellence. The Real Estate and Workplace Resources Group of Cisco is responsible for construction and development worldwide as well as facility and security operations. Jones Lang is a leading full-service real estate firm that ...

At a recent press release, cloud computing company Salesforce.com (CRM) disclosed that it will, along with Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO), be delivering a complete contact center in the cloud. The Customer Interaction Cloud, formed by Cisco and Salesforce.com, will use the newly introduced service cloud 2 from salesforce.com along with Cisco Unified Communications. This innovative solution will resolve the customer service issue of Small and Medium Businesses (SMB) to a large extent, and enable them to run their customer service operation through the cloud. This product is mainly targeted at the SMB clients, as demand for cloud computing applications is strongest in this market. The company expects that by using customer interaction clouds, the agents will be able to achieve better solutions without incurring any extra cost on hardware, software or telephone equipment. Service Cloud 2 is already catering to the customer service needs of ...

divbspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"Counter Trend Trading: Inviting Your Ego to Trade/span/b/divdivbr //divToday while trading and discussing trading on Stocktwits, I came across a very interesting article written by Dr. Brett Steenbarger. This article discusses the compulsion some traders have to counter trend trade. Traders who counter trend trade are sometimes called contrarians. The reason I wanted to blog about this article is that when I first started trading this was a mistake that I made often and it was costly. divbr //divdivI want to give a personal spin on what this is like as well as explain when being a contrarian can work to your advantage. Click a href="http://traderfeed.blogspot.com/2009/10/habitual-contrarian-traders-being-right.html"here/a for the complete article.br /br /I started trading in the early nineties, using the SOES and Select-Net systems to get in and out of Nasdaq stocks. It felt really good to be doing something ...