cloud-bubble

Let’s get some boilerplate out of the way before we jump in to taking a look at the notable Wall Street winners and losers of the week ending January 14, 2011. Talkin’ Cloud doesn’t offer specific financial advice, and the choice to buy, sell, or hold is yours and yours alone. We just try to separate cloud hype from real-world financial performance.

Three Weekly Winners…

Rackspace Hosting (RAX) saw the index’s biggest weekly winner, with shares climbing 11.05% for the week ending Jan. 14, 2011. While the news in the middle of the week that Rackspace and Akamai were teaming up for cloud optimization certainly didn’t hurt matters, you can chalk up a last-minute price rally to the vagaries of the market.

Hosting solution vendor NaviSite (NAVI) may only be trading for $4.02/share, but when that price reflects a 8.38% gain over last week. Unfortunately, reasons for this upswing aren’t immediately obvious, though news that NaviSite will be sponsoring the EuroCloud UK meetup might have sparked some interest.

Vocus, Inc. (VOCS) turned things around – last week, they were leading the cloud losers, but a respectable 8.13% gain to $28.33 a share puts them right back into the winner’s circle. Talkin’ Cloud’s hunch? Vocus stock is correcting from a recent stock sale by the CEO. Also, perhaps Vocus got a boost from the announcement that they’d be outsourcing their budgeting and spreadsheet management to Adaptive Planning.

…And the losers

None of the three companies that lost this week – Blackboard, Inc. (BBBB), Intuit, Inc. (INTU), or talent management specialists Kenexa Corp. (KNXA) dipped more than 3%, so Talkin’ Cloud isn’t worried.

Cloud investors are likely feeling good right now. But no coin comes up heads every time, and to borrow a line from Alan Greenspan: We’ll be watching to see if cloud stocks are nearing irrational exuberance.

We’ll update the index again after U.S. markets close for the ending 21.

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