Paul Shread

U.S. stocks overcame another sell-off in Chinese stocks Monday to close the day with slight gains. Unlike February’s plunge in Chinese markets, the sell-off of the last few days has yet to affect U.S. markets, which have twice ended the day with modest gains after initially following Shanghai markets lower. The S&P 500 recorded its […]

The S&P 500 hit its third consecutive record close Friday after government reports showed strong jobs growth and contained inflation. May jobs growth of 157,000 was stronger than expected, and other reports showed strengthening manufacturing and tame core inflation, a bullish trifecta that sent the major indexes to solid gains on the day. The Commerce […]

Brocade capped a busy week late Thursday with a surprising announcement: the company will move into the market for host bus adapters (HBAs), traditionally a market belonging to partner Emulex and rival QLogic. Tom Buiocchi, Brocade’s vice president of worldwide marketing, said the company isn’t interested in taking market share from Emulex and QLogic so […]

The S&P (first chart below) continues to struggle around its 2000 all-time high range of 1527.46-1552.87. This is one of the ways resistance, such as old highs or lows, works — it’s the “get me out, I’m even” impulse — everyone who held an index fund through the downturn is now tempted to cash out. […]

Dell shares jumped more than 5% in late trading Thursday after the company beat Wall Street estimates and announced plans to lay off 10% of its workforce, or more than 8,000 employees. Dell’s earnings of 34 cents a share, or $759 million, were eight cents better than analysts expected. Sales rose 2.8% from the year-ago […]

The S&P (first chart below) finally cleared its previous all-time closing high of 1527.46, but the intraday mark of 1552.87 still remains. If the index can clear that level, it could be off to the races, particularly with all the commercial buying in the big S&P and Nasdaq futures contracts. But this remains a dicey […]

The S&P 500 set a new all-time closing high on Wednesday, eclipsing its previous record of 1527.46 set on March 24, 2000, the start of the technology downturn that cut the index in half over the next 2 1/2 years. The Nasdaq has recovered a little more than half of its nearly 80% decline from […]

Brocade this week continued its move from storage switch vendor to data management company with a slew of new product announcements and upgrades. The new products, aimed at managing block- and file-based data in data centers and remote offices, address performance issues, virtualization and data protection across the company’s storage area network (SAN) and file […]

Stocks remain range-bound here, but one very important group continues to bet on more upside: commercial futures traders continue to add to long positions in the big S&P futures contract. That’s the biggest accumulation by the big traders in several years, at least since the 2002 lows. That suggests to us that stocks should remain […]

Tech stocks rose Tuesday after takeover speculation boosted a number of names in the sector. Avaya , InfoSpace and CDW all gained on reports that they could be the next targets of the buyout craze, with Avaya and CDW rumored to be private equity targets and InfoSpace coveted by Spanish mobile content provider LaNetro Zed. […]

Stocks rose in pre-holiday trade Friday despite a bigger than expected decline in existing home sales that left no doubt that the housing market remains mired in a year-long slump. Technology shares led the rebound after leading the way lower on Thursday, with the Nasdaq up half a percent in midday trade. SourceFource , formerly […]

The S&P’s failure to set a new all-time high left the market open for sellers, who finally took control of the market today. But the good news for the bulls is that pre-holiday and end-of-the-month periods tend to be positive for stocks, which could give the S&P another crack at its all-time high of 1527.46-1552.87 […]