That's life in the big leagues. Stocks are forward looking — they're priced not on past results but on future expectations. Let RIM and Oracle serve as reminders that as we wrap up the second calendar quarter and head into earnings seasons, tech investors would do well to maintain low ones.

After the market closed Wednesday RIM said both first-quarter profit and sales more than doubled year over year. That's right. A company with a market cap of $70 billion grew earnings per share at a triple-digit rate for the third quarter in a row.

All should be right with the world, no? No. Shares were priced in expectation of yet another beat-and-raise quarter. (We were guilty of the euphoria, too.) After all, the market is used to being spoiled by its CrackBerry dealer.

It's painful enough that earnings and sales came up ever so short of expectations. Even worse, RIM told the Street that its estimates for second-quarter earnings are too high. It's hardly a surprise that a stock that gained 65% in the last five months would take such a shellacking.

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Maybe management is full of it but we buy their explanation for the outlook. RIM is investing in hardware and marketing. (They wouldn't say so but that's to fend off the threat from Apple's (AAPL) iPhone 3G and any other comers.)

We applaud that long-term view. The last thing RIM should do is sit on its laurels. We know too well what that picture looks like: a fading fresco of the Motorola (MOT) Razr. If we have any complaint with management it's that it didn't do a better job managing expectations heading into the release.

Apart from that, the fact remains that RIM's fundamentals still look strong. The company shipped more than five million new devices during the quarter and added more than two million new subscribers. That's not too shabby, especially considering that the highly anticipated 3G BlackBerry Bold won't be available until later this summer. (We got to play with one very briefly and came away impressed.)

The bottom line is a very good stock just got a lot cheaper. The same can be said for Oracle. The company's fiscal fourth-quarter earnings and revenue easily topped Street estimates but it was cautious in its outlook.

We've seen this again and again and yet still the market acts surprised. Times are tough. We're in a domestic downturn, perhaps even headed for a global recession. No one knows for sure, least of all Larry Ellison. There's absolutely no good reason for a management team anywhere, especially one in the volatile and unforgiving tech sector, to stick its neck out. A key part of a chief executive's job is to manage expectations. (See RIM above.)

More than ever managements' mantra needs to be "underpromise and overdeliver." Kudos to Oracle for tempering expectations on the current quarter. If there's a bright spot in the results, at least they do nothing to undermine the thesis that when it comes to tech it's best to own big companies with diversified, global revenue streams.

But all that's of little consolation today. Great expectations often lead to deep disappointments. The best a tech investor can do in such an environment is to dollar-cost average, maintain long horizons and keep a well-stocked supply of Pepcid.

Also See:

Smartphone Makers Diverge Ahead of Earnings

New iPhone Won't Derail BlackBerry

Internet ETF Makes Debut in Bad Market