Paul Shread

Nokia soared 14% after raising guidance on Thursday, sending that Nasdaq to the 2100 level – a point above the index’s January 2002 peak that marked the start of the final leg down in the bear market. Nokia said it expects earnings of 28-29 cents a share, well above previous guidance of 21-23 cents, on […]

Nortel moved to the front of the VoIP pack Wednesday with a huge win. NT stock soared 19% on news of a multi-year Voice Over Internet Protocol deal with Verizon . Sonus fell 10% on news of the competitive loss to Nortel, but Lucent rallied 7% on a CDMA win in Brazil despite comments from […]

The Nasdaq (first two charts below) paused at 2078 resistance today. If it heads higher tomorrow, it could have a date with 2093-2099, the January 2002 peak. Support is 2066, 2047-2050, and 2040. The last three days formed an imperfect bullish three white soldiers on the index; the techs just keep right on trucking. The […]

Shares of Sun Microsystems surged 7% Tuesday after Merrill Lynch said it is seeing signs of a turnaround at the company. Merrill raised fourth-quarter estimates on Sun based on positive field checks and a strong currency gain from the falling U.S. dollar. But more importantly, Merrill said it is seeing signs that Sun’s installed customer […]

Four-gigabit Fibre Channel received yet another big boost on Monday, with the first 4-Gig FC product implementation. Hitachi Global Storage Technologies announced Monday that it has completed a successful 4 gigabit per second Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop (FCAL) data transfer between two fully integrated hard drive controllers, the first 4-Gig announcement by a major disk […]

A couple of option indicators are flashing caution here: the equity put-call ratio closed at a very complacent .40 today, and Max-Pain – the point where most options expire worthless – is at about 35.50 on the QQQ, the Nasdaq 100 tracking stock, almost 5% below today’s close. While hedging could continue to send the […]

Strong chip sales, bullish earnings news from Siebel Systems , and upgrades to Microsoft and Dell made for a strong rally on Wall Street Monday. The Semiconductor Industry Association reported that chip sales were up 4.5% sequentially in November, with strength across all sectors. Chips stocks gained 3.6% on the day. Siebel gained 10% after […]

Competition in the low-to-mid end of the Fibre Channel switch market may soon get even tougher. Brocade plans to introduce a new low-to-midrange switch this spring, according to a research note by Susquehanna Financial Group analysts Kaushik Roy and Phillip Rowe. Codenamed “Dazzler” and based on a derivative ASIC , the new switch could cost […]

The Dow and Nasdaq (first four charts below) are closing in on their 2002 peaks of 10,670 and 2099, and the S&P (charts five and six) isn’t too far from its 2002 peak of 1073-1077. Spots to look for a breather – if nothing else, those are areas everyone is watching, and some will probably […]

A wobbly start to the New Year today; a hint of a volatile year ahead? Given that you have to go back to 1966-1967 to find a period with less volatility, it’s almost a given that 2004 will be more volatile than the last nine months of 2003. On the plus side, the bank index […]

IT spending is likely to improve in 2004 – but at a modest pace. That was the assessment of CIO Magazine’s December poll, which found that CIOs plan to increase IT spending at a 6% rate over the next year. While that’s not likely to evoke comparisons to the late 1990s, the good news is […]

Since it’s ‘That Time of Year,’ we thought we’d give storage industry analysts an open mike and ask them to reflect on 2003 and predict what will be hot in 2004. Three analysts took us up on the offer — Arun Taneja, founder and consulting analyst at the Taneja Group; John Webster, founder and senior […]