Paul Shread

Yesterday’s intense selling raised hopes that sellers around the S&P 500’s all-time high may finally be capitulating, but the bulls failed to capitalize today, suggesting that we may see more selling in the near term unless buyers can drive the market forcefully higher. The good news is that monthly inflows begin next week, and with […]

Amazon.com shares soared nearly 25% Wednesday after the company posted blowout quarterly results, helping stocks recoup some of Tuesday’s losses on fears of a credit market meltdown. Apple fared well after the close, gaining 8% after the company blew past earnings estimates but issued disappointing guidance and iPhone sales figures. Apple’s earnings of 92 cents […]

Selling pressure today reached its highest levels since June 7 — a day that marked the low of the last couple of months for the Dow and Nasdaq. The good news is that such intense bouts of selling can mark capitulation and could mean that we aren’t too far from a market low, and unless […]

Amazon.com managed to follow up its blowout first quarter with an equally stellar second quarter. The online retailing giant reported 35% sales growth to $2.89 billion, beating estimates by $90 million. Net income was up 257% to $78 million, or 19 cents a share, three cents better than expected. Amazon’s third-quarter and full-year guidance were […]

EMC posted 21 percent sales growth in the second quarter, led by strong midrange storage sales and strength in the company’s RSA security and VMware virtualization divisions. EMC CEO Joe Tucci said the company is “in a sweet spot of the IT industry,” and said new storage systems introduced last week give the company momentum […]

Today’s bounce appeared to run into plenty of selling pressure, at least in the tech sector, where the Nasdaq (first chart below) had to fend off a few bouts of selling just to end the day in the green. That kind of relative weakness in a key sector suggests that stocks may have more work […]

Texas Instruments late Monday reported quarterly earnings that met expectations, but the company’s sales came in a little light. TI’s quarterly sales were down 7% year-over-year but up 7% sequentially to $3.42 billion, below $3.45 billion Thomson Financial estimates. Earnings of $610 million, or 42 cents a share, were in line with estimates, thanks to […]

Security firm Hifn is acquiring storage startup Siafu Software, furthering the marriage between data storage and security. The merger combines Hifn’s network security and data compression technology with Siafu’s encrypted iSCSI appliances, which already use Hifn chips. “This acquisition dovetails precisely with the direction this industry is heading,” said Benjamin Woo, IDC’s research vice president […]

As we noted yesterday, new highs in the Dow and S&P without participation from the financials or the broad NYSE list was a troubling sign, and it didn’t take long for the market to punish the lack of breadth. On the plus side, though, commercial futures traders continue to add to long positions in the […]

Disappointing earnings reports from Google and Caterpillar sent stocks plunging on Friday. Google shares tumbled 5% on a rare earnings miss, while a huge earnings disappointment from Caterpillar punished its shares by 4% and shaved 30 points off the Dow. Microsoft slipped 1% despite an earnings report that met expectations, and AMD slipped 2% on […]

It’s taken quite some time, and even then the market barely got it done, but the Dow and S&P (first two charts below) finally eclipsed some important levels here. The S&P closed above its March 2000 high of 1552.87 and the Dow took out 14,000, although both milestones were accomplished by the slimmest of margins. […]

Investors reeling from disappointing results from Intel and Yahoo got some good news Wednesday when IBM and eBay posted quarterly results that topped Wall Street forecasts. IBM shares were up 2% in after-hours trading after the company beat estimates by 3 cents with $1.50 a share earnings. Sales were up 9% to $23.8 billion, well […]