Paul Shread

Hope that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates later this month to stave off a recession helped stabilize blue chip stocks on Monday, but it wasn’t enough to keep the Nasdaq from falling for a seventh consecutive day, its longest losing streak since June 2006. The culprit was a tech sector downgrade by UBS, […]

Stocks plummeted Friday on a government jobs report that contained bad news on growth and inflation, and Intel once again led the way lower. The U.S. Labor Department reported that the economy added just 18,000 jobs last month, well below estimates, and wages rose at a 0.4% clip for the second straight month as the […]

With weakness in November and December continuing into the first week of January, the market continues to look more like 2000-2001 than we’d prefer. The Fed clearly isn’t being aggressive enough to stem the meltdown — witness the hopeful mortgage market charts that are coming unglued here (first chart below, courtesy of Markit.com) — and […]

Chip stocks stayed under pressure Thursday on worries about rising inventories amid a slowing economy. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index lost 1.4%, following a 3% drop Wednesday on a Bank of America sector downgrade. The index has tumbled 22% since mid-October on slowdown fears. Intel lost 2.7% and AMD another 5%, while Texas Instruments was down […]

Investors worried about a slowdown and inflation got a bit of both today, sending the Dow to its worst-ever point loss to start a new year. On a percentage basis, the Dow’s 220-point, 1.67% decline was its worst start to a new year since 1983. News that manufacturing unexpectedly contracted last month while prices paid […]

The two strongest months of the year could do nothing to break the market out of its six-month trading range. And election years tend to be choppy, so there’s no guarantee that the indexes will break out any time soon. The S&P 500 (see first chart below) remains stuck near the bottom of its trading […]

For the storage industry, 2007 may be looked back on as the year Dell got serious about storage. After years of heavy reliance on partner EMC, Dell branched out in dramatic fashion this year when it announced plans to acquire iSCSI specialist EqualLogic for $1.4 billion. Dell added to its storage story today with the […]

Better than expected results from Research in Motion and a cash infusion for Merrill Lynch put investors in a festive mood on Friday. Research in Motion soared 11% on better than expected results and guidance, the latest evidence that technology spending is surviving the six-month credit market meltdown. Coupled with Oracle’s blow-out results late Wednesday, […]

If the credit crunch that has roiled global financial markets for six months is having any effect on technology spending, Oracle and Research in Motion certainly aren’t showing it. Oracle shares jumped 6.5% on better than expected results, leading the Nasdaq to a 1.5% gain on Thursday. After the close, Research in Motion did even […]

The tech sector got some welcome news late Wednesday, when Oracle and Accenture delivered quarterly results that topped Wall Street forecasts. Shares of both companies were trading higher after hours, but it remains to be seen whether the good news will be enough to boost a market buffeted by a global credit crunch. Oracle’s November […]

Stocks staged a modest rebound Tuesday on hopes that global central bank action can stem the credit market crisis. A $500 billion credit infusion from the European Central Bank helped stabilize stocks a day before investors get the results of a Federal Reserve credit auction. Meanwhile, the Fed proposed tighter mortgage lending standards, too late […]

Adobe started out a big week for earnings reports on an upbeat note, posting better than expected results and guidance late Monday. Adobe’s 34% rise in quarterly sales to $911 million was well above Wall Street forecasts, and earnings of 49 cents a share were a penny better than expected. The company also raised first […]