Shares of VMware Inc. (NYSE: VMW) are headed lower today following a downgrade from Merrill Lynch. The brokerage firm cut its rating on the equity from Buy to Neutral due to valuation concerns; VMW has added more than 60% since its October 21 earnings report. Merrill maintains a $31 price target on VMware, which represents a premium of just 1.4% to the stock's closing price on Tuesday.

It's shaping up to be a rough week for VMW. Yesterday, the tech stock sat out a broad-based rally in the equities market, and slumped to a daily loss of nearly 4% as word hit the Street that Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) chopped its VMware stake in half. Specifically, Intel unloaded about 4.75 million of the 9.5 million VMW shares it purchased in July 2007. According to a regulatory filing, half a million shares each were sold to Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) and EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) -- the latter of which already owns a majority stake in VMW.

With VMW shedding nearly 6% out of the gate this morning, it seems likely that the shares will add on to their year-to-date slump of more than 64%. The stock continues to find resistance from its 10-week and 20-week moving averages, and a reversal of optimism among option traders could accelerate the equity's decline. During the past 10 days, investors on the International Securities Exchange have bought to open nearly two times more calls than puts on VMW.

Elizabeth Harrow is an analyst and financial writer in the research department at Schaeffer's Investment Research. She is featured in the video series Schaeffer's Daily Q&A on SchaeffersResearch.com.

EMC Corp.'s (NYSE: EMC) once-high flying VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW) finally found the wherewithal to replace its CEO, Diane Greene. The company replaced her yesterday with former Microsoft executive Paul Maritz. Microsoft is shaping up to be VMware's main competitor as computing environments in many business circles would like to jump on the virtualized bandwagon instead of dedicated hardware platforms for specific purposes.

Although VMWare was a hot IPO back in August of last year -- touching the $125 mark in October -- the stock started a downward slump right before Christmas and has been on a see-saw ever since. VMW shares are sitting less than four points from all-time lows this morning after a 25% drop Wednesday. In fact, this month has seen a 39% share price slump on the back of an overall 52% drop in 2008. Those numbers are sure to get any CEO in hot water. Although Greene reportedly constantly clashed with EMC management (EMC owns a large majority of VMware), the final axe swing surely came on the back of the share price depression currently underway. EMC management, in other words, bowed to the needs of the market in canning Greene.

Greene has been referenced as inadequate to lead a company into the world of a $2 billion annual business (its projection for 2008). I don't buy it -- she has a Master's Degree in Computer Science from UCal Berkeley along with another advanced degree. At heart, she's a brilliant computer nerd. As the head of a leading software virtualization company, her credentials and investment in VMware sound like a perfect fit. At the end of the day, though, financial performance in the eyes of a public share price is the driving force in executive retainer decisions. Greene helped co-found VMware and is heavily invested in it, but the market is not investing in her any longer. Let's hope Maritz can do a better job.

EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) released quarterly results the other day to a good amount of market fanfare. Its results spiked 77% from the year-ago quarter on strong sales of EMC's core competencies: data storage hardware and software. The market has reacted in favorable fashion since that time, pushing EMC's public shares to their highest level since 2001. Right now, the company's shares stand at over $24 each.

EMC's lingering problem for the near term was partially put to rest, as the company stated that a potential corporate spending pullback on data storage was not happening as far as it could see. Indeed, the internet continues to grow by leaps and bounds, and all that website traffic and web-based email has to live somewhere. Not to mention corporate data center storage.

Joe Tucci, EMC's CEO, told the market, "Despite the air of caution in the financial services industry, we see enough opportunity to achieve our growth objectives going forward." By "air," he's referring to the domino effects being seen in the mortgage industry at this time, causing hefty losses in the nation's largest banks, mortgage companies and investment houses that put so much risk into irrational housing loans that billions are now evaporating from their collective houses as homeowner defaults rack up month after month.

Apparently, someone (or something) is buying more corporate data storage in lieu of troubles in the financial sector. Maybe more storage needs are required to store all the default and bankruptcy paperwork in digital form or something.