Israeli router chip company EZchip Semiconductor Ltd. (EZCH) supplies, via its Yokne’am neighbor Marvell (MRVL), the chips for Cisco’s new routers. These are advanced routers currently undergoing checks and trials at many Cisco (CSCO) customers, particularly the giant telecommunications companies. For EZchip, this probably means that it is on the eve of a strong boost to sales and profits. The growth will come all at once in one of the coming quarters.

This being the case, I am exploiting EZchip’s low share price, and tripling my investment in it. I added EZchip to my portfolio exactly three years ago, when I wrote that the train was leaving the station, and that after many years of development, the company was on a strong growth track. This indeed is what happened, mainly because of Juniper Networks (JNPR), which built its MX family of routers around the second generation of EZchip chips. Along the way, I took advantage of the steep rise in the share price, and sold half my holding at a large profit.

Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker spoke about mobile Internet-connected devices at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco. She expects that we are at the beginning of a massive technology revolution of the mobile Internet, led by Apple’s (AAPL) mobile devices the iPhone and iPod Touch, two devices with the highest growth rate ever in the history of new launches.

According to Meeker, the revolution will be ten times greater than the desktop Internet revolution, and it is expected to grow at a much faster pace. Surrounding the revolution, all of today’s wireless technologies will flourish WiFI, GPS, 3G, Bluetooth, and others.

On Thursday, network chip maker EZchip (Nasdaq: EZCH) will report results, and I expect that for the first time in the company’s history, it will move to double digit quarterly revenue of over $10 million. In the second quarter, there was a drop to $6.7 million, after its largest customer, Juniper Networks (Nasdaq: JNPR), temporarily halted orders and used up the chips in its inventory. In addition, it turned out then that Juniper planned to use self-developed chips, rather than EZchip’s, so that in a few quarters, Cisco (CSCO) - through Marvell (MRVL) - will become EZchip’s biggest customer.

The interesting thing is that in parallel with EZchip's results on Thursday, Juniper is holding a press conference with announcements of new launches to mark the share's move from Nasdaq to the New York Stock Exchange, under the same symbol. In honor of the event, it is even unveiling a new corporate logo.

Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker spoke about mobile Internet-connected devices at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco. She expects that we are at the beginning of a massive technology revolution of the mobile Internet, led by Apple’s (AAPL) mobile devices the iPhone and iPod Touch, two devices with the highest growth rate ever in the history of new launches.

According to Meeker, the revolution will be ten times greater than the desktop Internet revolution, and it is expected to grow at a much faster pace. Surrounding the revolution, all of today’s wireless technologies will flourish: WiFI, GPS, 3G, Bluetooth, and others.

When my portfolio tracked by "Globes" returns 71% (inception of January 1st, 2001 to date), while Nasdaq returns negative nearly 13%, it’s a signal, to me, to begin bringing profits home and building a cash position ahead of the profit taking which is bound to occur sooner or later.

In line with that, I am selling one of my riskiest investments of this year, Verint Systems Inc. (Pink Sheets: VRNT.PK). Verint yielded a four month return of 97%.

Last week, the stock indices returned to the levels they were at two weeks previously, after a deluxe correction, which means we are going into the reporting season with high expectations. For the first time since the crisis began, investors will not make do with results of the “it could have been worse” variety, and not even with companies meeting estimates, but will want much more than that: growth in sales and profits in comparison with the previous quarter beyond market expectations, and that goes for fourth quarter guidance too.

Last week’s outstanding stock in the portfolio I manage here was without doubt Ceragon (CRNT), which rose by more than 18%. In the past month, it has risen by more than 31%, and I mention this because exactly a month ago, Jim Cramer recommended the stock on CNBC. I wrote at the time that if Cramer recommends a small Israeli stock in a technological niche that not many people understand, then he knows something that the market doesn’t know yet, and on Thursday we found out what he knew then. Whoever listened to him made a nice profit.

When three giant companies, like Cisco (CSCO), Abbott Labs (ABT), and Xerox (XRX), announce deals in the same week, at a combined value of $15 billion, mostly in cash, you tend to believe that the executives at those firms, some of whom went through company-threatening crises in the past, see good things ahead in the middle to long term.

The acquisitions are good news for the market, but the Cisco deal is threatening to Radvision Ltd. (Nasdaq: RVSN), which I hold in my portfolio measured at "Globes".

Wall Street year-end summaries take place in December, but for us, the switch to a new Hebrew year, around September, is always a good opportunity for reflection.

It was not a year that SanDisk Corporation (Nasdaq: SNDK) founder and CEO Eli Harari will soon forget, since in my opinion the firm was in real existential danger over the course of it. Like much of the market, SanDisk shares had a dramatic bungee jump, falling from $20 per share to a low of around $5 per share in November, and returning to $23 per share on the eve of Rosh Hashana.

CNBC's Jim Cramer mentioned Ceragon Networks Ltd. (Nasdaq: CRNT), which I hold in my portfolio tracked by "Globes", as well as Harris Stratex Networks, Inc. (Nasdaq: HSTX) on Friday, and Ceragon shares rose more than 7% on Monday.

Both companies provide wireless backhaul solutions - thickening broadband network capacity between the communications towers and the central points behind them. The potential is great in many places in the world, except for China, which Cramer erred in naming as a customer of Ceragon's.

What's the connection between SanDisk Corporation (Nasdaq:SNDK) and Marvell Technology Group (Nasdaq: MRVL)? Basically nothing, except for the fact that both made impressive acquisitions in Israel in the past decade. SanDisk bought msystems, and Marvell bought Galileo, each at valuations of $1.5 billion.

Additionally, in the past year, Marvell entered the NAND field when it developed and began to sell SSD controllers, which are flash based storage drives. On Friday, Samsung (SSNLF.PK) provided a new connection between the two, and Marvell shares rose 5%.

Among the shares in Israeli companies in my portfolio tracked by "Globes", Protalix Biotherapeutics Inc. (AMEX:PLX) can be expected to attract the most attention over the coming weeks. It is a rare situation in our area - a biotech company that grew from an Office of the Chief Scientist incubator to reach a market cap of $500 million, on the verge of completing a clinical trial for a drug aimed at a market of over $1 billion in annual sales.

In the next few days, the last patient will complete the administration of the Gaucher disease drug, and the company said that in October it will report the results. At the same time, the company is handing the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in stages, the application of authorization of the drug, since it gained FDA fast track designation.

Two companies held in my portfolio tracked by "Globes" will report results this week for their quarter ended July 31: IPTV chip company Sigma Designs (SIGM) and Marvell Technology Group (Nasdaq: MRVL).

Sigma Designs was second on Fortune's list of fastest growing public companies over the past three years. However, short sellers, and most analysts, were not impressed.

I'm adding Protalix Biotherapeutics Inc. (AMEX:PLX) to my portfolio at the expense of half my holding in Fundtech (Nasdaq: FNDT), although I continue to believe in Fundtech as a special niche company in financial software. I'm getting into biotechnology again, which, as is well known, is a risky field but one with dreams of big profits that sometimes come true. My first experience with biotech in my portfolio, with Pharmos Corp. (Nasdaq: PARSD), ended, as will be recalled, with an almost complete write-off after failure in the decisive trial for a new drug. The second, with Omrix, ended with a highly profitable exit when the company was sold to Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) for 2.5 times the IPO valuation.

Protalix is on the final straight, about two months before publication of Phase III trials of its Gaucher disease treatment. Genzyme's (GENZ) treatment for Gaucher's disease has annual sales of $1.2 billion. Protalix's platform is revolutionary in that it produces its drug from plants: from carrots in the case of the Gaucher's disease treatment under trial, and from tobacco leaves in the cases of other drugs at various stages of pre-clinical trial development. Extraction from plants not only has great advantages for production costs; it also means low vulnerability to contamination. This is as opposed to production from animal cells, which is Genzyme's method. Genzyme's production lines became severely contaminated recently, causing its market cap to plummet.

Last week was chiefly a macro week. It proved once more that the markets know how to read economic activity six months ahead. From the March low, the indices have risen by as much as 50%, and parallel with that, last week we received encouraging data on the US economy: a further improvement in the ISM survey of production; spending in the construction sector rose in June, contrary to the forecasts; home sales jumped 3.6% in June, compared with a projection of just 0.7%; and above all, the unemployment rate surprised by falling to 9.4% in July, and the number of workers laid off was the lowest in the past year.

A round of investor conferences is taking place currently. SanDisk (SNDK) founder, chairman and CEO Dr. Eli Harari, besides appearing at the 2009 Oppenheimer Technology Conference today, will speak on Thursday at the third annual Flash Memory Summit in California. In a tough year of heavy recession, SanDisk has undergone particularly big upheavals: a takeover bid by Samsung, which sent SanDisk's share price to $24; cancellation of the offer to purchase and a recession, that sent the share price down to $5 in November; strong recovery in sales, including a doubling of NAND sales; and, most importantly, an agreement signed giving a further seven years of royalty payments from market leader Samsung. The last two factors have brought the share price to its current level of $18.

Wall Street players set off for their August vacations on Friday, but not before breaking records that had lasted up to 21 years for returns in July. The Dow Jones index rose 8.4% last month, a rise the like of which has not been seen since 1989; the Nasdaq rose 7.8%, the largest July rise since 1997; and the S&P 500 broke a record for July set in 1988, by rising 7.4%. Of the 30 shares on the Dow Jones index, Caterpillar (CAT) was the best in July, with a rise of 35%, while McDonald’s (MCD) was the worst, with a fall of 4%. Perhaps this means that investors reckon that the recession is over, and that the earth movers will be moving again while fewer people will visit cheap food chains.

Among the Israeli stocks I hold in my portfolio, Elron (ELRN) stood out last week. It rose 60% over the week, and has risen 300% this year to date. The rise is entirely attributable to US Food and Drugs Administration [FDA] approval for subsidiary Medingo to sell in the US a patch that is a unique insulin pump. I added Elron to my portfolio exactly two years ago following a meeting with then CEO Doron Birger. I formed the impression then that the company had a very handy portfolio of private companies, mainly in healthcare and cleantech.

Last week I added Orbotech Ltd. (Nasdaq: ORBK) to my portfolio tracked by "Globes". Recently there has been a significant strengthening in investments in new LCD screen production lines, primarily for advanced TVs. Orbotech's equipment, as is known, has a near-monopoly in the screen inspection niche.

The final trigger to buy the shares had been the acquisition by Dr. Jacob and Dr. Judith Richter of 1.2 million shares and last week they added another 418,000 shares. Their combined stake is now about 9% of the company. The fact that it was reported on US Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC] form 13D and not 13G shows that this is not just a financial investment, but possibly the option of a takeover.

This week I am adding Orbotech Ltd. (Nasdaq: ORBK) to my portfolio tracked by "Globes". I am paying for it with funds from selling half the portfolio's stake in ClickSoftware Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq: CKSW), which has yielded a very nice 93% return in two and a quarter years.

It may very well be that on Wednesday, when ClickSoftware announces its results, I will cry over the sale, but I prefer the approach of CNBC's Jim Cramer, who always urges his viewers to take profits off the table, because eventually "pigs get slaughtered".

Two interconnected Israeli firms held in my portfolio, tracked by "Globes", were hit this past week: Orckit Communications Ltd. (Nasdaq: ORCT), which buys EZchip (Nasdaq: EZCH) processors for two of its three platforms, fell after it published a shelf prospectus for a rights issue; and EZchip paid, over 10 days, a "fine" of over $100 million in market capitalization, for an event which should have been celebratory.

EZchip was covered for the first time by respected investment house Jeffries & Company, and the report revealed to the company and its investors that major customer Juniper Networks (Nasdaq: JNPR), which until today contributed about half of all EZchip's revenue, is on its way out as a customer.

Shares in EZchip (Nasdaq: EZCH) plummeted 14% on Thursday to $13.81 on turnover of nearly 1 million shares, after Jeffries and Company analyst Adam Benjamin began coverage of the company with a "Hold" recommendation and a target price of $18.

EZchip founder and CEO Eli Fruchter didn't dream that it would be through the first formal investment house research report that he would learn, apparently for the first time, that his biggest customer, Juniper Networks (Nasdaq: JNPR), is set to abandon EZchip and independently develop a processor, instead of moving to the next generation of EZchip processors.

Today I am adding another small Israeli company that is trading at a discount, in my opinion, and has the potential to rise significantly if it maintains its growth, especially in profit, as it did in its first quarter results - IncrediMail Ltd. (Nasdaq:MAIL).

The company's business model is unique, in that it is built primarily on revenue from Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), which means it has a lot of potential, along with not a little risk. Whenever a small company depends on one gorilla it is exposed to the mistakes of the gorilla.