Ciena Shares Popped: What You Need to Know

Although we don't believe in timing the market or panicking over market movements, we do like to keep an eye on big changes -- just in case they're material to our investing thesis.

What: Shares of long-distance networking specialist Ciena (Nasdaq: CIEN  ) shined today, climbing as much as 12% on above-average trading volume.

So what: Ciena itself doesn't have a lot of news to share today, but rival Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO  ) jumped 18% on an estimate-beating fourth quarter. Of particular relevance to Ciena was Cisco's 16% year-over-year jump in telecom orders.

Now what: Are the telecom giants of the world finally getting back to the promised network builds in support of data-heavy 4G offerings? That's how investors are reading Cisco's tea leaves anyway, boosting share prices of telecom-focused network vendors Ciena, JDS Uniphase (Nasdaq: JDSU  ) , and Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU  ) nearly as generously as Cisco's own. However, the last three months have been brutal for every type of networking stock, and Ciena shares are down more than 50% over that span despite this jump. All things considered, I see tremendous deals on Ciena and Alcatel-Lucent at these prices but a big value trap hidden behind Cisco's discounts.

Interested in more info on Ciena? Add it to your watchlist.