Russ Smith

At the moment I'm a bit unhappy as about 10 days ago I decided to buy Brocade(8.75) but had 3COM(COMS) on my list. They paid about a 40% premium at 7.90 a share so I could have made $600 bucks in about 10 days.

BRCD closed at 9.25 and is down to mid 8.70's right now. If it gets to 8.50 I may buy more, it's a solid company, has earnings coming out soon that I think will be good. And as CNBC pointed out, HP's deal puts a lot of heat on IBM to make their own deal to compete, and BRCD would be one of the obvious candidates.

The bigger thing for me is I think this merger stuff in tech is an interesting sign. It almost says companies are still scared to invest in R&D and hire because they don't know what regulations will be. So if they want to expand or branch out, they buy another company, consolidate(layoff) and do it that way?

CNBC was saying this is a good sign, I have to admit I'm not sure it is. Some mergers are great for all involved but what I see is likely more layoffs, and I see companies are essentially afraid to innovate, they don't know what the rules are anymore so they don't want to take the risk of trying to invent something?

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“Your expectations always exceed outside expectations. I feel like you just can’t stop working, can’t stop getting better, because I’ll be a failure in my eyes before I’m a failure in someone else’s eyes.” -- Arron Afflalo