Continuing with a recent theme, here are two questions of interpretation. Interpreting Market Action During today's trading stocks opened lower, staged a big mid-day rally, trading in positive territory.  Finally, stocks closed about 2.4% lower.  Here is a chart. With the trading in mind, what do you think of this news story: Dell Downgrade Sends Stocks Lower The text of the story continues the theme.  The problem is that the downgrade news was widely available before the market opened. Paulson Gradecard Secretary Henry Paulson was asked how he would rate his performance on a scale of 1 - 10.  He answered that if the question was regaining stability in the financial system he thought that "we were close to a 10." Judging from media and pundit commentary, most would disagree.  Is there any ...

Monday:Economic Empire (-26), Cap U & IP (76.6%, -0.1%)Earnings Lowe’s (LOW), Target (TGT), Ctrip.com (CTRP)Tuesday:Economic PPI & Core (0.2%, -1.5%)Earnings China Med (CMED), Home Depot (HD), Medtronic (MDT), ReneSola (SOL), Saks (SKS), Jack In The Box (JBX), La-Z-Boy (LZB)Wednesday:Economic Weekly Crude, Build P’s & Housing (770K, 780K), CPI & Core (0.2%, -0.8%), FOMC MinutesEarnings BJ’s (BJ), LDK Solar (LDK), Ross (ROST), Trina (TSL), Dress Barn (DBRN), Gymboree (GYMB), Hot Topic (HOTT), Intuit (INTU), Limited (LTD), Men’s Wearhouse (MW), PETsMART (PETM), Woodward Governor (WGOV)Thursday:Economic Weekly Claims, Leading Indicators (-0.6%), Philly Fed (-30.0)Earnings Barnes & Noble (BKS), Children’s Place (PLCE), Dick’s (DKS), Gamestop (GME), Pantry (PTRY), Patterson (PDCO), Suntech Power (STP), Yingli Green (YGE), Buckle (BKE), Autodesk (ADSK), Dell (DELL), Gap (GPS), J. Crew (JCG), Salesforce (CRM), Zumiez (ZUMZ)Friday:Economic NAEarnings AnnTaylor (ANN), Canadian Solar ...

Taiwan-based PC agent marketing company Genuine C&C has become Dell's exclusive retail agent in Taiwan, selling complete Dell products such as notebooks, desktops and LCD products. So far, Dell has over 850 sales sites on the Chinese mainland, in addition to its deployment in more than 1,000 Gome appliances stores, and its consumer products are sold [...]

I suspect now is the time to bring out the....RALLY MONKEY!!!Was watching Bloomie TV last night as commentators went ga-ga over the 'terrible and way unexpected' warning from Intel (NASAQ:INTC).The stock is down around 6% this morning.They didn't say anything we didn't already hear from Best Buy (NYSE:BBY) yesterday. Demand has fallen off the cliff and inventory levels have grown. Notice how BBY bounced?It was only matter of time when the Wall St. induced crisis hit the Main Street. It's here and the stocks have already discounted it.Paulson put out the open flames at fin. institutions and is now moving on to support the consumer. While the markets yesterday took this as a negative signal, I do believe this is really the prudent step. You can't support the whole system from one end alone.Oh ...

Warren Buffett says buy. Jeremy Grantham says it will get worse. Both are celebrated value investors. Who is right? It all depends upon your view of the third derivative of investing. Today we look at valuations in the stock market. This is the second part of a speech I have given in the past few weeks in California and Stockholm. I am updating the numbers, as the target keeps moving. 

While from one perspective things look rather difficult, from another there is a ray of hope. What can you expect to earn from stocks over the next five years? It should make for an interesting letter. Note: this will be a little longer than usual, but part of it is there are a LOT of charts.

I likened this to the economic situation we are in now. With consumer spending “resetting” to a new lower level, we are going to have to

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Lessons Learned from Second Life By Dr. Tracy Tuten, Author of Advertising 2.0: Social Media Marketing in a Web 2.0 World Virtual worlds give participants an opportunity to be whoever they want, wish or hope to be. With a custom designed "avatar," you can look, behave and speak any way you want. It's your "second life," after all. Brands, however, don't have that luxury. They bring established reputations and perceptions into a realm where everything is new and anything goes. The "Wild West" nature of virtual worlds frightens brand managers schooled in carefully crafted and controlled messages, and Second Life indeed chased many away. But with technology -- and especially social ...

JP Morgan is upgrading Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) to Overweight from Neutral. Apple’s model is far more diverse than previous vintages, and they think the staying power has been underappreciated. With its market share momentum likely intact, Apple in firm's view offers strong relative downside protection to the looming earnings reset that they expect to impact IT Hardware companies in coming weeks and again early next year.- Diverse model provides staying power. There has been considerable investor concern lately over the Apple model losing steam, particularly if the consumer vertical rolls over. JPM estimates that the company’s total model exposure is about 70-75% consumer, but they think that Apple’s brand and market share momentum offer meaningful buffers to potential macro-driven pressures on the consumer.- Retail expansion could sustain share gains and international momentum. JPM thinks a major force behind Apple’s growth story will be its diversifying revenue ...

CommVault Systems Inc. (CVLT:NASDAQ) is a data storage and management software company. The company is the only independent software and service company focused exclusively on data management. CommVault provides companies with a better way to manage data growth, lower costs, and reduce risk by using a single, unified architecture.

The stock of CommVault has been hit hard in the stock market’s latest selloff. The stock is currently trading a bit below $9 per share, which is just off of its 52-week low of $8.35. The stock’s 52-week high was at $23.04. The company’s share price decline accelerated in September after Dell warned that it was seeing softening demand for its products. Dell is a large CommVault customer.

However, most Wall Street analysts are still positive on the company. Of the analysts that follow CommVault, 4 rate the company a ’strong buy’, 2 rate the company a ‘moderate buy’, and 3 rate the

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Technology stocks are moving higher Tuesday in an attempt to recuperate some of the previous session's huge losses. At midday, the NASDAQ was up by almost 4%.

One of those stocks moving higher includes Apple (AAPL), which dropped 18% on Monday, but is up more than 6% on Tuesday. Microsoft (MSFT), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), and DELL (DELL) are also moving higher.

"AAPL" Free Stock Analysis: Buy? Sell? Hold?Zacks Investment Research

Still on the topic of the bail-out plan, guest contributor Bill King (The King Report) offers his ideas on how to put a more credible plan together. His thoughts are insightful and deserve the urgent attention of the powers that be.

Premises • The US credit system is broken. • The Paulsen-Bernanke Bailout Plan does not insure that those banks and brokers that receive bailout aid will increase lending. The reality is the market is hoarding liquidity and these banks are likely to do the same. More importantly consumer lending has been a small, often insignificant part of their business. They made money by trading and through securitization of debt. • It is necessary to create a new system parallel

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