Paul Shread

A warning by contract electronics manufacturer Celestica and a sector downgrade by Goldman Sachs sent tech stocks lower on Wednesday. Celestica blamed “recent order reductions from some of its largest communications and IT customers” for the shortfall, which cast suspicions on large customers like Cisco and Lucent , which lost 4% and 2.6%, respectively, on […]

Brocade co-founder Kumar Malavalli is back with a new venture targeting backup and recovery. The former Brocade CTO took the wraps off InMage this week, a start-up founded in late 2001 that Malavalli says creates a new category — “data continuity” — by delivering “business event recovery at any location, any time, within any storage […]

About the only sign of weakness for the Nasdaq (first chart below) is that it can’t take out 1920 resistance; other than that, the index continues to hold up well despite some pretty overbought conditions. Support is 1900, 1895 and 1888, and resistance above 1920 is 1935-1940. The S&P (second chart) continues to stall at […]

Oracle delivered solid results after the close on Tuesday, but the company’s forward guidance was a little less robust than analysts were looking for. Oracle beat Wall Street estimates by a penny with earnings of 10 cents a share, driven by strong database sales. Revenues of $2.21 billion were a little lighter than estimates, but […]

The Nasdaq (first chart below) continues to gain nicely. The problem is that it may be coming at the expense of the broader market, which continues to lag here. Unless the broader market can join the rally soon, the market could be vulnerable to a correction. The Nasdaq is as overbought as it’s been in […]

Broadcom became the latest chip company to rally despite saying it will miss Wall Street estimates. Shares of Broadcom surged 9% Monday after the company said it expects third-quarter revenues to come in flat or up slightly from the second quarter’s $641 million, which would be below analysts’ forecasts of $676 million and the company’s […]

The storage software market remains very much a two-horse race, according to the latest numbers from IDC. EMC and Veritas dominated the space in the second quarter, with 32.5% revenue share and 22.6%, respectively, according to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker (see table below), which measures software sales in areas such as replication, storage […]

The Nasdaq (first chart below) is propping up the market nicely here. The S&P and Dow (second and third charts) hung onto their uptrends today and found buyers. The Nasdaq even took out rising resistance today, a plus. The one negative is that all that occurred on lower volume than yesterday, but for now, the […]

Thursday’s landmark ruling that Oracle can proceed with its bid to acquire PeopleSoft could recast the enterprise software landscape. The decision will likely put pressure on PeopleSoft to sit down and talk with Oracle, and could put other companies in the sector in play too. PeopleSoft may also have another suitor, according to speculation at […]

The Nasdaq (first chart below) briefly broke its uptrend today before recovering to close just under 1876-1880 resistance. If it can clear 1880, 1890 and 1900 are the next resistance levels. 1855-1862 is now support. The S&P (second chart) did a much better job holding its uptrend line. 1114-1116 is major support, and resistance is […]

Strong guidance from Nokia sent tech stocks higher on Thursday, and the chip sector soared 5% despite warnings from Texas Instruments , National Semi and KLA-Tencor . Nokia surged 8% after saying it expects third-quarter earnings of 14-16 cents a share, above 11-cent analyst estimates. Revenues of $8.28-$8.4 billion would exceed $8.04 billion forecasts. The […]

On the plus side, the Nasdaq (first chart below) hung onto its uptrend today. On the downside, almost everything else went against the bulls — internals deteriorated across the board, and volume rose on a down day. One positive we’d note is today’s high put-call ratio; perhaps short-sellers can provide support for the market. Any […]