Markets Do Indeed Have a Sense of Humor

The star of the dot-com bubble was Cisco, updated below on the quarterly chart. After earnings, CSCO is selling off today on the back of pressure from memory chip pricing. 

But the larger point is that Cisco finally--finally!--made its way back to its prior dot-com bubble highs after twenty-five years of meandering price action. The stock came awfully close to the $82 highs (from March 2000) back in December 2025, but did not quite get there. Early last week we saw Cisco eventually overrun those highs, spiking as highs as $88.18 before the earnings selloff. 

Now, all of this may seen trivial to you. After all, CSCO is mature tech, a polite way of saying it is a has-been in terms of Nasdaq leadership status. CSCO is clearly not one of the Magnificent 7 monsters. 

However, it is worth remembering that markets do indeed have a sense of humor, especially at extremes. Specifically, during the October 2008 crash there was a session where the only NYSE listed name in the green was Campbell Soup Company (as it was known back then, ticker symbol CPB), with the suggestion that soup lines would soon be near in the global financial crisis. 

Thus, perhaps the joke here is that Cisco finally went roundtrip to its prior dot-com highs (when the Nasdaq, semis, and most major tech names who survived already surpassed their own dot-com highs years ago), and now is the time to look for exhaustion as CSCO's new highs serve as a way to finally consecrate the current bull run with the former leader going roundtrip. 

Either way, this earnings selloff takes CSCO back below the prior $82 highs and may very well prove to be too tough of a resistance level to hold above for the foreseeable future. 

Elsewhere, this morning's downside reversal was one of the sharper ones we have seen in a good while. Dip-buyers may finally have the epiphany that diminishing returns are setting in with each effort they give, thus compiling them to back off. The CPI print reaction tomorrow morning ought to be telling. 

Finally, to compliment the CSCO analysis, when the Attorney General at a Senate hearing about Epstein is touting the S&P and Dow at big, round numbers and all-time highs, how far off can a top really be?

In the 1970s the Dow flirted with the big, round 1,000 level for most of the decade. Regardless of your political/Epstein views, equities and the senior indices have never before been this hyped up by a White House in modern American history.