Paul Shread

Cisco Systems led stocks higher Wednesday, but not before they got off to a wobbly start. The indexes spend much of the morning in the red on concern about weak retail sales, a rate hike by the Bank of England, a smaller than expected gain in productivity, and nervousness ahead of Friday’s jobs report. But […]

Competition in the high-end Fibre Channel market has grown to the point that EMC is seeking – and winning – price concessions from its own spin-off. EMC has apparently won 10-15% price concessions from McDATA on its high-end switches, according to analysts. “EMC wanted McDATA to lower prices and they wouldn’t, so they stuffed the […]

The equity put-call ratio finally showed a little bit of fear on today’s pullback, but a close around the .80 level or higher would have been better (it closed at .61). While sentiment is finally improving, we continue to think that a pause in the market to refresh sentiment would be a positive, the longer […]

Once again, the equity put-call ratio barely budged on a down day, a sign of complacency. Cisco’s numbers may have been great, but the sentiment backdrop suggests that a rally here has some risk to it. The Nasdaq (first chart below) faces resistance at 1967-1971 and 2000, and support is 1950, 1938-1940 and 1915-1920. The […]

Shares of Cisco Systems jumped 5% after hours Wednesday after the networking giant beat earnings and revenue estimates. Earnings of 17 cents a share beat estimates by two cents, and revenues of $5.1 billion topped $4.85 billion forecasts. “We saw strength across our core switching and routing businesses, as well as traction in our advanced […]

HP has teamed with BAE Systems and three institutions to build an advanced global computing Grid for collaborative simulation and visualization in aerospace and defense design. The collaboration will be based on open Grid standards like the Globus Toolkit and the Open Grid Services Architecture, which combines Grid technology with Web services. As part of […]

The equity put-call ratio may have been the most interesting aspect of today’s trading. Despite a market that was down most of the day, the equity put-call ratio closed below .50, a sign of some significant complacency. The market may yet need a long pause before it can continue higher. Tomorrow night is Cisco’s earnings, […]

Priceline plunged 15% after hours Tuesday after missing revenue estimates and warning. Earnings of 24 cents a share beat estimates by three cents, but revenues of $243.4 million came in shy of $251.64 estimates. The company said fourth-quarter earnings will come in at 2-8 cents a share, well below 11-cent estimates. Priceline said results were […]

The market has looked shaky the last couple of days, but much to the bulls’ credit, it’s still standing, with new highs in all indexes today. The Nasdaq (first chart below) closed just above 1967 resistance; above 1970, it could see 2000. Support is 1960, 1940 and 1915-1920. The S&P (second chart) has major resistance […]

Brocade has unveiled multi-protocol fabric routing services for consolidating SANs and extending their reach over long distances. The services will be delivered on the Brocade SilkWorm Fabric Application Platform, an intelligent switch designed to host storage management applications in the SAN fabric, and will let customers consolidate and scale SANs as well as extend SAN […]

Chip stocks led the market to new highs on Monday on news that chip sales surged 17% in September. Combined with first-of-the-month inflows and better than expected manufacturing and construction reports, the major indexes hit new highs for the year. The Semiconductor Industry Association said that “demand in the global semiconductor market is rising briskly. […]

What good is $51.6 billion if you can’t spend it? Microsoft has apparently been spurned in an attempt to acquire Google, according to this morning’s New York Times. With $51.6 billion in cash as of Sept. 30, presumably Microsoft’s offer wasn’t a lowball one. But with talk that Google could be valued at $15-$25 billion […]