Paul Shread

Quantum is giving de-duplication customers a choice. The company unveiled a new high-end disk backup and replication system this week that lets customers decide whether to run de-duplication before or after backing up, allowing them to choose between saving “space or time,” as Quantum disk systems product manager Mike Sparkes put it. The new DXi7500 […]

The strangest development today was a big spike in the “fear index,” the options volatility index (first chart below), on a flat day for stocks. That’s a hopeful sign for the bulls, who otherwise remain down and out here, clinging to this month’s lows. But even the NYSE advance-decline line (second chart) is starting to […]

Oracle’s quarterly results topped Wall Street’s expectations late Tuesday, but traders appeared inclined to sell first and ask questions later. Oracle’s sales were up 20% year-over-year to $5.83 billion, well ahead of $5.59 billion estimates, and pro forma earnings of 37 cents a share were two cents better than expected. What’s more, new software licenses […]

The indexes are retesting their lows here, and with any luck, they won’t have to go much below them, if at all. The NYSE advance-decline line (first chart below) is so far holding above its lows set earlier this month, holding out hope of a positive divergence as the indexes retest their lows. Such strength […]

A strong rally on Wall Street Monday fizzled under the weight of rising subprime mortgage losses at Bear Stearns hedge funds. Also weighing on traders’ minds was a Federal Reserve meeting later this week. The Fed is expected to leave interest rates unchanged, and a drop in existing home sales today reinforced that view, but […]

Call/Recall hopes to put optical storage on the enterprise map with new technology that squeezes 1TB on a single disk and offers transfer rates that compete with hard disk drives. Call/Recall, a 20-year-old company with its roots in HPC storage, says its two‑photon 3D optical storage technology is the brainchild of company co-founder and chief […]

Rising interest rates and oil prices and subprime mortgage losses at a Bear Stearns hedge fund sent stocks tumbling again on Friday. The sell-off — one of a half-dozen this month on credit market and inflation fears — overshadowed the much-anticipated IPO of private equity firm Blackstone Group , a big player in the private […]

Stocks turned steep losses into solid gains by Wednesday’s close on a pair of chip sector upgrades. AMD and Nvidia gained nearly 8% each on positive comments from Stifel Nicolaus and Lehman Brothers, respectively, and Nvidia also benefited from an upbeat analyst day and a new high-end graphics chip. Stifel Nicolaus analyst Cody Acree said […]

The S&P’s all-time intraday high of 1552.87 remains quite a hurdle for the market, and with only a month or so left until seasonality turns negative, it may turn out to be the final milestone for the bull market for a while, with market sentiment beginning to turn against the bulls. 1505 is important first […]

The biggest problem for the market here might be the sudden lack of blockbuster mergers and big takeover premiums that have been behind the big market gains of the last year or so. Those mergers convinced investors that there was still value in stocks — and the lack of big deals the last couple of […]

Yahoo shares gave back early gains Tuesday, as investors wondered if the company’s new leadership can reverse its market share losses or even lead to a blockbuster merger or partnership. Yahoo shares opened at their highs Tuesday morning and spent the rest of the day on the defensive, giving back all of the stock’s overnight […]

HP announced a number of new products today designed to lower power costs and boost security. The company said its “green” storage technology can cut storage array power and cooling costs in data centers in half. Introduced at the HP Americas StorageWorks Conference in Las Vegas, HP’s new Adaptive Infrastructure offerings include thin provisioning and […]