Cloud Computing and Cloud Stocks Rise Another 2 Percent

Our Talkin’ Cloud Stocks Index, which tracks 20 cloud computing and cloud services companies, rose 1.84 percent for the week ending February 24. Moreover, our cloud computing stocks index is now up a strong 20.60 percent overall since January 1, 2012. Notably, the index hit that mark ahead of a Dow Jones weekly gain of 0.3 percent and a NASDAQ gain of 0.4 percent.

Before we take a look at our weekly winners and losers, let’s go over our standard warning: We maintain the Talkin’ Cloud Stocks Index to measure cloud hype vs. real-world performance. Talkin’ Cloud doesn’t offer specific financial advice, and whether you buy, sell or hold is up to you or you alone – but if you make it big on the markets based on some insight you get here, remember your humble correspondent when you cash the check, yes?

The week’s biggest winner, far and away, was Salesforce.com (CRM), which reported strong earnings. Apparently, investors were so pleased with the cloud CRM provider’s performance in 2011 that its stock price shot up 11.20 percent to $143.64/share. Not far behind was sometimes-rival NetSuite (N), which apparently rode Salesforce’s wave to an 8.49 percent rise to $49.47/share. Finally, Athenahealth (ATHN) joined suit with an otherwise-inexplicable gain of nearly 7 percent to $70/share.

The only loser worth talking about this week is cloud backup and recovery platform provider CommVault (CVLT), which sunk 4.5 percent to $52.25/share. Oddly enough, it seems like the drop was sudden — it was continuing more or less the same as it had from last week before dropping unexpectedly on Friday morning.

That’s that for this week. Come back next Monday for our next regular update on the momentum of the Talkin’ Cloud Stocks Index.