Here they are...the most widely-read stories on TheStreet.com now:


Stocks Ease After Cisco Report
Robert Holmes

Stocks were moderately lower early Thursday as a disappointing profit
forecast at Cisco offset the positive impact of sub-$58 oil.


Dell at the Crossroads
Alexei Oreskovic

It's hard not to be in the spotlight when you're the world's No. 1
computer maker. But after Dell surprised the Street with a negative
preannouncement last week, its third-quarter earnings report Thursday
afternoon will be subject to particular scrutiny as investors look to
see light shed on recent difficulties. The company's surprise
Halloween earnings revision sent shivers across the financial markets,
raising questions about the sustainability of Dell's growth rates in a
global and increasingly competitive market, as well as about the
health of the overall PC industry.


A Smarter Way to Spot Winning Stocks
Jon D. Markman

Investing would be so easy if only it were about events that happen as
expected. The problem is that most important moves in the market are
unexpected, deviate from norms and cannot be counted in conventional
ways. This is always a bummer, but particularly so now, as investors
try to determine whether the zippy early-November bounce is the start
of an exciting new charge higher or a pointless countertrend rally
doomed to fail. The usual ways of making this determination -- via
forecasts for earnings and global economic growth -- don't seem to be
working right now, and new research says they never did. So rather
than rely on those, we'll turn to the views of market veterans who
focus simply on the demand for stocks.


Cisco Says Just Enough to Disappoint Bulls
Scott Moritz

For Cisco fans, the devil is in the details. Shares were recently down
2% after the company offered disappointing earnings guidance following
a relatively upbeat first quarter that included a 10% revenue gain.
After slipping 11 cents in regular trading Wednesday, the stock was
down another 35 cents to $17.40 on Instinet.

New Zealand's Reality Matches Fantasy
Roger Nusbaum

New Zealand is the type of place that a lot of people say, "Oh yeah,
I've always wanted to go to there." After many years of saying just
that, my wife Joellyn and I took an 11-day trip there last month.
Friends of ours own a house three hours north of Auckland, near
Whangarei (pronounced Fahng-eray). Whangarei is one of the few cities
in the northeastern part of the North Island. The house where we
stayed was actually about 20 kilometers south of Whangarei in Urquhart
Bay, which we used as a base to try to experience as much as we could.
As the accompanying pictures indicate, the Whangarei region looks
tropical, which is the case for most of northern New Zealand.

Daily Investing Tip
JBL: Span the Globe

Even with soaring oil prices, the discount carriers have been making
money. If you want to learn how to make money running an airline, then
you should follow their lead. This is what Constantino de Oliveira Jr.
has done in Brazil. Mr. Oliveira Jr. grew up working at his parents'
bus companies. He wondered why it was too expensive for Brazilians to
fly. By opening his airline, Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes, in
January of 2001, he provided Brazilians an option to the bus system.
In less than five years, he has built one of the most profitable and
fastest-growing airlines in the world, and arguably the best. -- John
Bradshaw Layfield, TheStreet.com



Jeff Cooper
Expect the S&P to Break On Through
The momentum and internals suggest a move higher.

Tony Crescenzi
Why Greenspan Should Step Aside
An early changeover would be helpful to Bernanke and arguably the markets.