Paul Shread

Stocks soared Friday after new home sales and durable orders both came in much stronger than expected, easing fears that the credit market crunch could send the economy into a tailspin. Tech stocks were led higher by the likes of Apple , Intel , EMC and Oracle . Dell added 1.8% ahead of its earnings […]

Vitesse Semiconductor Corp. said late Thursday that it is selling the bulk of its storage products business to Maxim Integrated Products for $63 million in cash. Maxim will acquire Vitesse’s serial attached SCSI (SAS) and serial attached ATA (SATA) expander product segments, enclosure and baseboard management devices, among other assets of Vitesse’s Storage Products Division. […]

Stocks sure don’t look too impressive since last Friday’s big gap up. The Nasdaq and S&P (first two charts below) gapped over their main downtrend lines today only to fall back below. About the only positive to note there is that sellers couldn’t make much of those breakout failures. The Nasdaq faces resistance at 2576, […]

Tech stocks traded lower Thursday after investors took profits from a five-day run-up that saw the Nasdaq gain nearly 200 points off last week’s low. Bank of America’s plan to inject $2 billion into Countrywide Financial wasn’t enough to overcome credit market fears, as the Dow and S&P also finished just below the flat line. […]

Credit market fears took a back seat to good old-fashioned merger mania on Wednesday, as reports of talks between Ameritrade and E*Trade drove stocks higher. Ameritrade shares jumped 5% on a report in the Wall Street Journal that it is in talks with E*Trade , and news that credit was flowing for blue chips boosted […]

Buyers are finally making some progress against significant resistance here, but they still have quite a bit of heavy lifting ahead of them. One positive to note here is that the Investors Intelligence weekly survey showed bulls and bears narrowing to 40.6 to 37.4, a whole lot of skepticism to base a rally on. The […]

A big name on the founder’s door apparently wasn’t quite enough for grid storage startup Crosswalk, which ceased operations last month. The company launched by McData founder Jack McDonnell started out in storage resource management (SRM) and then “redefined the term ‘180-degree turn’ when they switched not only gears, but probably the whole engine too, […]

The major indexes continue to stall here without taking out much in the way of significant resistance, raising the odds that we see a near-term pullback. The Dow (first chart below) can’t begin to challenge the 13,200-13,300 resistance zone. Support remains 13,000 and 12,850-12,900. The S&P (second chart) can’t get back above its 200-day average […]

Tech stocks posted solid gains Tuesday, led by a few big names, but blue chips sagged on continued credit fears. Still, hopes for additional Federal Reserve intervention and reports that Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway could buy some of Countrywide Financial’s assets limited downside, with the Dow ending the day just modestly lower. EMC rose 3% […]

Three universities are banding together to form a “Polar Grid” to study the effects of global warming in real time. The effort, funded by a $1.96 million grant from the National Science Foundation, will be led by Geoffrey Fox, director of the Community Grids Lab at Indiana University, joined by partners from Elizabeth City State […]

After weeks of volatility, stocks returned somewhat to normal on Monday, ending slightly higher as credit market fears took the day off. Stronger than expected results from Lowe’s helped calm housing market fears for a day, while some notable technology names also scored big gains. Research in Motion continued to pace tech gains, soaring 7% […]

Have we finally purged fear about the credit markets? The market finally settled down today, but we wouldn’t rule out a low-volume retest of last week’s low at some point, perhaps a higher low. Certainly after the run-up off Thursday’s low, some sort of consolidation would be healthy. Also important will be the quality of […]