Paul Shread

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) fell for a second day Tuesday after another analyst said the company could be hit by the slowing economy and falling consumer confidence. Goldman Sachs analyst James Mitchell lowered estimates on Google, following a similar move by Barclays a day earlier. Mitchell lowered his estimate for Google’s revenue growth from 4% sequentially […]

U.S. stocks opened sharply higher Monday on news of a nearly $600 billion Chinese economic stimulus package, then spent the rest of the day selling off on worries about the health of the domestic economy. A Circuit City (NYSE: CC) bankruptcy, huge losses at AIG (NYSE: AIG) and Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and worries about […]

EMC (NYSE: EMC) today took the wraps off its long-awaited cloud storage infrastructure solution, moving the vendor long known for proprietary hardware offerings into the market for commodity hardware. EMC Atmos, previously known by the codenames “Maui” on the software side and “Hulk” on the hardware side, is aimed at massive global storage infrastructures, such […]

Stocks surged Friday despite a worse than expected October jobs report and news that GM (NYSE: GM) is running out of cash. The economy shed 240,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate spiked to a 14-year high of 6.5%, and the Labor Department also reported that job losses in prior months were 179,000 worse […]

We said the stock market looked like traders might “sell the news” after the election, but not before a big head fake up. That often occurs on the final move of a wedge or ending diagonal, an “overthrow” that fools traders before the pattern breaks in the predicted direction. Now that momentum appears to have […]

A dramatically lowered sales outlook from Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) and fears of a prolonged recession sent stocks plunging on Thursday, for a two-day loss of about 10% for the major stocks indexes. Traders were also bracing for Friday’s monthly employment report, which is expected to show a loss of 200,000 jobs for October in […]

Investors didn’t wait for Cisco’s (NASDAQ: CSCO) earnings report or the results of the presidential election before placing their bets. Stocks surged to their highest level in three weeks Tuesday, and reasons given for the rally ranged from relief that the election uncertainty will soon be over and anticipation of a year-end rally to continued […]

The wide trading ranges we discussed last week remain very much in play, but the choppy action of the last four days could portend a big move in the short term. The indexes all appear to be forming ‘rising wedges’ or ‘ending diagonals’ in the last four days, patterns clearly visible on the hourly chart […]

Stocks had their calmest day in six weeks on Monday, as traders showed uncertainty ahead of Tuesday’s presidential election and analysts debated the health of the chip sector. The chip sector (PHI: SOX) slipped 1% despite an upgrade from Citi Investment analyst Glen Yeung, who said chip companies are well positioned to survive an economic […]

Stocks rose Friday even as dismal economic reports continued to pile up and Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) fell to a 10-year low on another weak earnings report. Sun fell 13% to $4.60 a share after reporting sales at the low end of expectations that were lowered just last week, and falling gross margins and a […]

In response to turmoil in the credit markets, Foundry Networks (NASDAQ: FDRY) has agreed to a lower takeover price in its merger agreement with Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD) (see Foundry-Brocade Merger Hits a Roadblock). Foundry agreed to lower its price from more than $19 a share in cash and stock to $16.50 a share in cash, […]

News that the U.S. economy suffered through its worst slump in seven years in the third quarter wasn’t enough to dissuade investors from buying stocks on Thursday. The Commerce Department reported that the economy contracted by 0.3% in the third quarter, the worst showing for the economy since the aftermath of the Sept. 2001 terrorist […]