Barron’s Online is out with a story regarding possible reasons behind the decline of OptionsXpress’ shares. The stock has dropped more than 20% since November amidst an environment where both the broad market and option trading volume have surged.

OptionsXpress has targeted individual traders and helped drive the options boom which resulted in Wall Street salivating over its impressive results. The company held more than 204,600 customer accounts in 2006 (up from 22,171 in 2002) and was had a compound annual growth rate of 81% for revenue and 101% for net income.

Lately, Barron’s says, the murmur on OptionsXpress has grown dark and ominous. Their success has invited competition from both upstarts and larger firms muscling in on its turf, making it tougher to snag new customers. The cost of attracting each new account has more than doubled over the past year to $350.

Also, as the U.S. contemplates trading options in penny increments, exchange and market makers squeezed by narrower spreads are threatening to cut back on payments to brokerages for steering customer orders their way. The kickbacks, called “payment for order flow,” make up 15% of OptionXpress’ revenue.

Barron’s goes on to conclude that sensing the end of the line, growth investors have disembarked and the shares may have continued to slide if not for a whiff of takeover speculation last week.

Below is a one year chart showing the share price performance of OptionsXpress, which trades under the ticker symbol OXPS.

JMP Securities is out with a note today suggesting that the declaration that Cisco witnessed in its US enterprise business during the January quarter has continued into its April quarter. JMP came to the conclusion based on a series of checks they recently made with industry sources and Cisco equipment resellers.

JMP senses that Cisco’s enterprise switching and routing sales, which make up as much as 50% of the company’s business, may be the most negatively impacted by the slowdown. The firm says given the uncertainty surrounding future business, the macroeconomic environment, the fact that Cisco currently trades at a premium to other large cap technology peers, and their belief that consensus estimates have become too optimistic, they encourage investors to be cautious with Cisco’s stock.

Cisco’s stock price, which trades under the ticker symbol CSCO, has traded in a 52 week range of between $17.10 and $28.99.

After the close on Thursday, Google Inc. reported Q1 earnings of $3.68 per share which beat the street by $0.37. Analyst estimates called for the company to make $3.31 per share in Q1. Google, which trades under the ticker symbol GOOG, also beat on revenue.

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google said:

“The global growth of our core search and ads business and our focus on building our partnerships drove our strong results in the quarter. We continued to expand our worldwide footprint, adding important new partners and growing our platform to increase our ability to deliver targeted and measurable ads. The ongoing expansion of our network allows us to improve the user experience through new opportunities and programs.”

On the earnings conference call the company said that it expects International sales to eventually be greater than 50% as the see continued momentum in their International business. Revenues from outside of the United States totaled 1.71 billion (about 47% of total revenue vs. 42% a year ago). However, the company did said it may see additional pressures on Traffic Acquisition Costs going forward and margins may decline as they continue to invest heavily in the business. Also, the season heading into the summer tends to be the slowest for the company.

Schmidt chose to focus mainly on the core search business during the conference call:

“Sometimes I worry we talk so much about new things that we forget to talk about our core business,” Schmidt said. “But it’s the strength of that business that allows us to take calculated risks with new products. Targeted and effective advertising continues to be our mantra”