Paul Shread

Stocks surged Wednesday on news that retail sales unexpectedly rose in January, and Applied Materials paced tech sector gains after the chip equipment leader posted better than expected quarterly results. The Commerce Department reported a 0.3% retail sales gain in January, much better than the second straight monthly decline that economists expected. Along with news […]

Stocks soared in early trading Tuesday on the latest plans to save faltering credit markets, but the indexes pared their gains late in the day — and the Nasdaq gave back all its gains to end the day unchanged. A plan to freeze home foreclosures and an offer from billionaire investor Warren Buffett to help […]

Yahoo shares edged higher Monday, lifting the tech sector for the third straight day as investors continued to speculate on the company’s future. Yahoo gained 2.3% after the company formally rejected Microsoft’s nearly $45 billion bid. Microsoft responded that it remains interested in a deal, even as speculation mounted that Yahoo may pursue a partnership […]

By almost any measure, the stock market has lost its downside momentum here. For starters, new lows on the NYSE remain below 100; at their bottom three weeks ago, there were more than 1,000. The S&P 500 is only 1.6% above last month’s closing low of 1310, yet the number of stocks making new 52-week […]

A $1 billion share buyback boosted Amazon.com shares Friday and drew investors into technology shares for a second day. After plunging 5% in the first three days of the week on slowdown fears, the Nasdaq has gained more than 2% off Thursday’s low despite a warning from Cisco that the slowdown is real. But investors […]

It is a market truism that stocks tend to bottom long before recessions end, so perhaps investors can find some solace in the market’s ability to rally in the face of some pretty dismal news on Thursday. A warning from Cisco of a sharp slowdown and the weakest January for retail sales in at least […]

Cisco told investors on Wednesday exactly what they didn’t want to hear: that growth slowed dramatically in January and may not rebound for several months. The assessment from CEO John Chambers on the company’s conference call sent Cisco’s shares skidding by 7% in after-hours trading to a new 52-week low. Cisco’s sales for the quarter […]

Today’s sharp downturn raises the odds of a retest of the lows; we’ll be watching to make sure that internals like new lows and declining issues don’t expand too much in the process. Looking at the intraday chart on the S&P 500 (first chart below), we see a sharp drop at the open followed by […]

The stock market had its worst day in a year on Tuesday after a report on the U.S. services sector indicated that the economy may already be in a recession. The Institute for Supply Management’s non-manufacturing index fell to 41.9 last month, 12 points lower than December and 11 points lower than economists expected — […]

Stocks fell Monday as investors took profits after last week’s extraordinary gains. Financial stocks led the way lower on downgrades, while technology investors contemplated the latest in the Microsoft-Yahoo-Google triangle and awaited quarterly results from Cisco. Google shares lost 4%, falling back below $500 for the first time in six months, after the company and […]

Traders had a lot of mixed signals to deal with on Friday, and in the end, they chose to side with the bullish ones. Stock futures were down overnight after Google missed Wall Street estimates, then up big in the early morning on Microsoft’s hostile bid for Yahoo. They took another hit less than an […]

More bullish developments today, with back-to-back 80% upside volume days on the NYSE and a close back above 1370 on the S&P (first chart below). That puts the S&P back inside the 15-month trading range that broke last month, while the strong upside volume could suggest a bottom, according to the work of Paul Desmond […]