Gus Venditto

The anticipated Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index set a dour mood for the markets early this morning but after spending most of the day sharply down, the major indices recovered in the late afternoon. By mid-day, the Dow was down 170 points, testing the 8200 level before bouncing. It rose in the final two hours […]

Stocks swung without much conviction today. Positive results from American Express buoyed the markets in the morning but the the general mood turned negative later in the day. Still, a number of hardware stocks fared well, while the broader markets moved slightly lower. The Nasdaq lost 1.2 percent to close at 1315. The S&P 500 […]

E-mail is the killer app that made the Internet essential to millions. So why are we letting spammers choke its air supply? Spam abuse is so widespread that I know 8-year-old children who have already mastered the habit of cleaning their in-boxes. Even in a medium-sized business, the mail administrator filters out upwards of 100 […]

After days of selling, a rally spread across many high-tech issues on Monday, especially those related to telecommunications. The day started with a resignation from Qwest CEO, Joseph Nacchio, and the news that he will be replaced by Richard Notebaert, head of Tellabs and the former CEO of Ameritech. Qwest issues gained 20 percent, or […]

Technology stocks benefited from the relatively quiet atmosphere on Wall Street. What news was made reinforced the good feeling that has been in place for the last few days. A warning that oil prices could rise soon didn’t hurt either. Money moved out of energy stocks on the news that oil producers were considering production […]

Reports from several fronts indicated last-minute holiday sales were better than expected and many stocks spent the day enjoying a holiday spirit. Some of the optimism faded in the final hour however, the indices ended the day higher. The DJIA ended the day at 10,088, up 53 points at the close though it spent much […]

A report issued today by Nielsen/NetRatings and Harris Interactive that looks at what can be expected in e-commerce this holiday season was bullish in its predictions and the market for some e-tailers reacted in kind. Amazon rose more than 9 percent and CMGI , which owns etail site uBid, was up 8.9 percent on a […]

So you’ve got your eye on that Xircom SpringPort module, the one that should bring 11 Mbps wireless Internet access to your Handspring. It sounds great. It’s small, portable and fast. And just as you start to think of all the places where you could be using it, you begin to wonder. Exactly, where are […]

Ny.com, a Web site that calls itself the “paperless guide to New York City” and Prodigy, the national ISP, are offering interactive databases listing survivors of Tuesday’s World Trade Center collapse. As of Wednesday midday, with rescue workers still sifting through piles of debris at the building sites in New York and Washington, there was […]

The market closed the first week of the quarter with a sell-off as negative surprises outweighed the good. U.S. unemployment fell more than expected in June (114,000 jobs were lost, three times the expectated number) to equal the highest unemployment rate in two years at 4.5 percent. At the same time, two high-tech blue chips […]

Investors returned from the July 4th trading with a hangover. A profit warning from British telecom manufacturer Marconi set the tone early in the day with most techs dragged lower. Marconi closed the day down 52.3 percent. With little positive news to counter the bad news from London, Blue Chips opened lower and stayed down. […]

One of the Internet’s pioneering architects, Jim Ellis, died Thursday at the age of 45. Ellis, with fellow grad student Tom Truscott, conceived a design for linking computer bulletin boards that evolved into the Usenet system, which is still used today to deliver more than 40,000 newsgroups on servers around the globe. In 1979, Ellis […]