Paul Shread

Earnings from Cisco Systems and the Federal Reserve’s latest meeting on interest rates will dominate financial headlines this week. Cisco will report its quarterly results after the close on Tuesday, and investors can be forgiven for expecting more from the company than analysts have predicted. The networking giant has beaten estimates for eight consecutive quarters; […]

Stocks edged higher Friday on a weaker than expected jobs report and some blockbuster merger news. The Labor Department reported that the economy added 88,000 jobs last month, the lowest number since November 2004, but restrained wage pressures raised hopes that the Federal Reserve will be able to cut interest rates if needed to stimulate […]

The S&P (first chart below) finally took out 1500 today, but 1510, 1527.46 and 1552.87 still lie ahead. The danger for the market is that the bearish sentiment that has supported the market for the last year or so starts to unwind as the S&P completes its recovery from the 2000-2002 bear market. No evidence […]

The S&P 500 closed above 1500 for the first time since September 2000 on Thursday, ending the day a little more than 1% from its all-time closing high set in March 2000. Strong productivity and services sector growth and restrained labor costs were behind the market’s latest milestone in its recovery from the 2000-2002 bear […]

IBM has crafted a version of its Tivoli Storage Manager to back up and manage Microsoft SharePoint environments. The new Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) for Microsoft SharePoint provides backup and restore capability for SharePoint online collaboration environments. IBM notes that Microsoft provides tools to backup SharePoint’s underlying databases, sites and sub-sites, but they lack item-level […]

You don’t need us to tell you what stopped the stock market today: the S&P (first chart below) came within a point of 1500 before turning back. But what is perhaps more important is that the Dow (second chart) broke through a rising trendline that has stopped the index since last November. That shows significant […]

Two long-time stock market laggards had their day in the sun on Wednesday. Nortel and Symantec have been struggling under the weight of accounting issues and the integration of the Veritas acquisition, respectively, but both companies had Wall Street cheering their latest quarterly results. Nortel said Wednesday morning that it expects to post first-quarter sales […]

A new closing high for the Dow (first chart below) while the Nasdaq (second chart) barely made a dent in yesterday’s losses. We’re right back where we’ve been since November — it remains a blue chip market. The Dow faces tough resistance at 13,162-13,170, and support is 13,030, 13,000, 12,900 and 12,800. The Nasdaq barely […]

News that Microsoft might make a play for 24/7 Media and a News Corp. bid for Dow Jones sent stocks higher on Tuesday. Stocks were mixed early in the day on a stronger than expected national manufacturing report that also revealed more inflationary pressures. But the unexpected strength in manufacturing, along with falling oil prices […]

Onaro has unveiled a new product that makes sure applications get the storage resources they need. Onaro says SANscreen Application Insight 2.0 combines storage utilization data with an understanding of the application path to provide a complete picture of storage resource utilization and efficiency. The company says the product helps storage users analyze storage tier […]

Investors got a jump on the old slogan “sell in May and go away” today, and with the market entering its weakest half of the year, it’s time to exit our picks from last October too. We think the market may be fine for a few more months, but since it’s a mechanical system — […]

Stocks fell Monday after a trio of economic reports fueled fears that the economy may be cooling too fast. Personal spending, construction and Midwest manufacturing reports all came in weaker than expected, adding to jitters that began with Friday’s unexpectedly weak GDP report. National manufacturing and employment reports due out later this week could tip […]