MOST NOTEWORTHY:

• BigBand Networks Inc. (NASDAQ: BBND) was downgraded to Hold from Buy at Jefferies and to Market Perform from Outperform at Morgan Keegan on the company's negative Q2 pre-announcement to reflect decreased visibility.
  
• Citigroup downgraded Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. (NYSE: CMG) to Hold from Buy on valuation.
  
• Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: VRTX) was downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Merrill Lynch, as they believe investor expectations are high into November's American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases meeting.
  
• Soleil downgraded Cognos Inc. (NASDAQ: COGN) to Hold from Buy as they believe the strong Canadian dollar will depress operating margins and limit share upside.

• Jefferies downgraded Spectra Energy Corp. (NYSE: SE) to Hold from Buy.
  
• Goldman downgraded MeadWestvaco Corp. (NYSE: MWV) to Neutral from Buy and removed Crown Holdings Inc. (NYSE: CCK) from its Americas Conviction Buy List.
  
• UBS downgraded Atlantic Tele-Network Inc. (NASDAQ: ATNI) to Neutral from Buy.

Analyst downgrades: BBND, CMG, VRTX and COGN originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 28 Sep 2007 11:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The market smarted today with its 280 point drop, but as MarketWatch pointed out, it was only off .7% for the week.

The trouble for a lot of investors is that averages don't mean much if you are in the wrong stock.

Some big name, mega-volume stocks took on water like the RMS Lusitania after it was torpedoed off the Irish coast.

Stocks that provide high-speed internet infrastructure had substantial losses. Charter (NASDAQ: CHTR), the cable firm, has fallen fell from $4.14 to $3.00 this week. Big Band Networks (NASDAQ: BBND) went from $14 to $10. Limelight Networks (NASDAQ: LLNW), another IPO in the industry fell from $17 to $14.50.

Companies in the tech sector that are perceived as already weak took big dives as well. Motorola (NYSE: MOT) was above $17 at the beginning of the week. It dropped to $16.35 today. AMD (NYSE: AMD) went from over $14 to $12.85. Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) was above $23.60 early in the week. It hit $22.90 today. These stocks are already near their 52-week lows.

In a tough market, those companies viewed as being already in difficult straights often sell-off more than the rest of their industries. It seems that their recoveries appear less certain.

Mortgage companies are not even worth writing about. Some have lost 50% of their value. American Home Mortgage (NYSE:AHM) lost almost all of its. But, the fall-out in financial stocks is far from over.

The market thinks that Bear Stearns (NYSE:BSC) is holding more than its share of weak debt and debt derivatives. If that is true, the stock could be back to its late 2002 low of $54. That means that its value would fall another 50%. Hard to imagine, but entirely possible.

Investors in stocks that are dropping are in a panic now. They have the weekend to read the tea leaves, sweat it out at night, and hope that Asia rallies early Monday.

If the Nikkei and Shanghai Composite signal that the fear has moved around the world.

Well...

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 247wallst.com.

Market drop: pockets of pain originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 03 Aug 2007 17:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Big Band Networks (NASDAQ: BBND) had a bad quarter. The provider of infrastructure for moving video around the internet lost 25% of its value today down to $10.60. It announced a modest $54.5 million in revenue and earnings $.07 a share. An IPO this year, Big Band is now off from a high of $21.63.

LimeLight (NASDAQ: LLNW), a content delivery network that competes with industry leader Akamai (NASDAQ: AKAM), is off from $24.33 just after its IPO to $16.15. Akamai's stock is down 35% this year. It earnings disappointed investors.

In a related part of the internet infrastructure, Level 3 (NASDAQ: LVLT) came up with flat revenue and lackluster earnings for the last quarter. Its shares went from $6.42 to $4.93 after its announcement. It has recovered a bit since then.

But, there is a trend here. The companies that provide the pipes and pipe parts to get video around the internet should be doing very well during the "YouTube" generation. They are not.

Two things may be happening. The first is the the service providers are in such fierce competition for business in a market that Wall Street views as hot that margins are being compressd by price cuts. The other possibility is that, after two years of extremely rapid expansion, video streaming and consumption is flattening.

An industry that everyone thought would be a big winner turns out to be the opposite.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 247wallst.com.

Akamai (AKAM) and BigBand (BBND): Bad times for web video providers originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 03 Aug 2007 12:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.