Something on Cisco's earnings call last night went terribly wrong. In a rational business sense, Cisco made plenty of money, even though they missed analyst estimates: $1.9B in profit and $40 billion in revenue for the first time in the company's history really isn't that shabby.

But something else was going on. The conference call was awful. It did not inspire confidence. Cisco executives bungled words, proceeded with a new "four-part" format as if they were trying to choreograph an opera at the Met, and struggled to explain the business climate. Even John Chambers himself, master of the bullish technology catchphrase, seemed to have trouble elucidating exactly what the problem was.

"We think the words unusual uncertainty are ... a description of what's happening."

Whaaa? Had we been suddenly been dropped into some metaphysical California Yoga retreat? Unusual uncertainty? What is that? That's not the Chambers I know. That's downright whimpy.

I don't want things to fall apart in the stock market. No really, I don't. But the unusual level of "CNBC Optimism" combined with a bad chart, and terrible reactions to so-called "good news" today are all leading indicators, to me, that all is not well in market land. Let's take a look at these items one-by-one: 1) A $6B deal between SAP and Sybase is announced. It can't help the market though. As I like to say, it's not the news but the reaction to the news that matters. The market's reaction was muted, at best. Tech stocks have been selling off all day. 2) Even John Chambers can't save the market. When America's most polished optimist, John Chambers, announces a "great quarter" and comes on CNBC, but the market sells off, that's a bad sign. Cisco reported its "strongest quarter ever," but the stock has sold off nearly 5% so far today. Hmmm. 3) The S&P chart, which I commented on here, is looking more and more awful. Following the trillion-dollar Euro bounce, further gains have been muted, and we are getting yet another rounded top in the context of a scary looking waterfall like pattern. You think all those High Frequency Trader (HFT) programs are done with their mini-panics? I don't. On the chart below, I have shown the downward angle of the top we've formed in the last few weeks, as well as circle the area where that interesting "panic gap," was created after the Euro bailout was announced. Notice that the "Euro Bailout Rally" is now just a blip in the overall chart. For whatever reasons, markets like to gravitate back to areas of huge turbulence -- especially when there was a large gap. This is what I expect to happen to this market. That area will be tested again and either fail or succeed. Disclosure: Short S&P (stop at 1175), long S&P puts.

There was an incredible amount of hype leading up to Cisco's announcement of a new core router, the CRS-3. Typically, router announcements are not covered in detail by the mainstream press, but with Cisco's marketing acumen, they were able to raise the level of interest to a crescendo. Big deal? sure. Was it the revolutionary thing that will change the Internet? No. A revolutionary innovation would be if somebody suddenly announced an entirely new technology, like optical routing. Or that routers weren't even necessary anymore. A true innovation is unfathomable, such as trying to imagine the World Wide Web in 1982. This is an incremental upgrade of the traditional routing technology. It is, in fact, a crucial and necessary upgrade in capacity to an existing product that helps Cisco keep their edge in the core router market, but not an entirely new technology.

Let's give it a shot and live blog this puppy... Cisco's "change the Internet" announcement... it's supposed to be starting shortly (11AM ET). "The Broadcast Will Begin Shortly." It appears they are starting late.That can't be good for revolutionizing the Internet. Okay, here we go... 8:04 PT. We are greeted by Suraj Shetty, Cisco's VP Worldwide Marketing and John Chambers, CEO of Cisco. They are sitting around a table. It feels like watching "Face the Nation," only they are talking about routers. 8:07 CRS-3 announcement... Chambers says this has "12X the capacity of our competitors"... so apparently a lot of this is about a core router so far.