Paul Shread

Stocks rose Monday on hopes that the Federal Reserve will deliver another big rate cut when its two-day meeting adjourns on Wednesday. Expectations are for a quarter-point rate cut from the Fed to shore up the troubled credit markets that sent stocks tumbling over the summer, although a few traders are holding out hopes that […]

A blow-out quarter from Microsoft sent its shares soaring to a multi-year high Friday and boosted the Nasdaq by nearly 2%. Microsoft shares surged 9.5% to 35.03, its biggest one-day gain in years, and benefited the likes of Dell and HP, as the company showed that a product upgrade cycle can still pack a punch. […]

Microsoft is beginning to look like the growth stock it was in the 1990s. After years of dependable double-digit growth and a stock that went nowhere, Microsoft had come to resemble a mature company. But for the second time this year, the software giant posted the kind of growth that it routinely did in the […]

EMC CEO Joe Tucci outlined some of the storage giant’s product plans on the company’s third-quarter earnings call with analysts today. A system for Web 2.0 data centers and more products for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) are on the company’s agenda, he said. EMC also plans to offer a “spindown” feature on its disk […]

Stocks battled back from a steep drop on Wednesday, but a number of leading technology names ended the day with sharp losses. A $7.9 billion credit-related writedown at Merrill Lynch and a bigger than expected drop in existing home sales sent blue chip indexes nearly 2% lower for much of the day, and the Nasdaq […]

The market made a valiant attempt to bottom today, retesting Monday’s lows and reversing sharply. While there could still be some volatility into next week’s Federal Reserve meeting — and after, if the Fed fails to deliver a big rate cut — the market is now entering the strongest period of the year. Sentiment is […]

IBM has acquired NovusCG, a privately held storage solutions company, to bolster its storage services and software business. The Manassas, Virginia-based firm will become part of the Storage and Data Services business unit in IBM Global Technology Services. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Seven-year-old Novus employs 100 people and manages 25 petabytes […]

Amazon.com took investors on a wild ride Tuesday, jumping 10% ahead of its quarterly earnings report — and then giving it all back in after-hours trading despite some pretty solid numbers. Amazon reported that its third-quarter sales rose 41% to 3.26 billion, $120 million more than expected. Earnings of $80 million, or 19 cents a […]

Tech stocks led a rebound from Friday’s steep market plunge, and Apple kept the party hopping after hours with yet another blowout quarter. Apple reported quarterly sales of $6.22 billion, up 29% and $150 million better than expected, while earnings of $1.01 a share topped Wall Street forecasts by 15 cents. The normally conservative company […]

Brocade is unveiling a new director this week at its annual user conference in Las Vegas, along with a new strategy and architecture for data center networking. Brocade said its new Data Center Fabric (DCF) architecture will simplify data center connectivity by combining storage networking and server-to-server clustering in a single data center infrastructure, making […]

As we noted a week ago, caution was warranted through October 29, and the market is so far proving that observation correct. Investors Intelligence bulls-bears have hit nosebleed levels of 62-19, but commercial futures traders remain long the big S&P futures contract, so we have a mixed picture in sentiment, but one that could stand […]

Better than expected results from Google and AMD couldn’t overcome a dire warning from Caterpillar that sent stocks plunging on the 20th anniversary of the 1987 stock market crash. Caterpillar said many of the industries it serves are already in recession, and said it expects the U.S. economy to fade in the coming months. The […]