Paul Shread

Stocks soared Wednesday after traders interpreted the Federal Reserve’s latest policy statement as market-friendly. The Fed said it remains concerned about inflation, but in referring to future policy moves as “adjustments” rather than “firming,” traders interpreted the wording change as a move toward a neutral bias from a tightening bias. The hint of a rate […]

A perfect storm of errors caused the Alaska Department of Revenue’s data backup procedures to fail, wiping out data on a $38 billion account and costing the state $200,000 to restore the data. The mistakes apparently began in a Dell/EMC storage array and were compounded by improperly backed up data tapes. The mishap occurred last […]

The Nasdaq (first chart below) is showing surprising strength here, pushing back into its old December-February trading range, a level that repelled the index two weeks ago. Now can the techs build on those gains? We think the market stands a good chance of being disappointed by the Fed tomorrow, but there is also a […]

Oracle shares shot higher in after-hours trading Tuesday after the company’s quarterly results solidly beat Wall Street estimates. Oracle grew sales 27% in the quarter to $4.41 billion, beating $4.33 billion forecasts, and pro forma earnings of 25 cents a share were two cents ahead of estimates. New license sales — an important indicator of […]

Network Appliance has added QLogic Fibre Channel switches to its product arsenal, an interesting pairing of SAN upstarts. NetApp, long the NAS champ, has been moving into the SAN space in recent months. And QLogic’s storage switch ambitions have gotten a boost from the recent merger of Brocade and McData. According to Dell’Oro Group, Cisco […]

Solid buying on the NYSE today, with 84% upside volume, but that still isn’t the 90% “all clear” signal we were looking for. To underscore that point, just look to the Nasdaq, where upside volume was about 60% today. A little too much selective buying in tech land suggests a market that’s still a little […]

Oracle and Adobe rallied nearly 3% each Monday ahead of their earnings reports. Both technology bellwethers will report results after the market close on Tuesday. Oracle is expected to report a 23% jump in quarterly sales to $4.33 billion, according to Thomson Financial. Earnings are expects to climb by four cents a share to 23 […]

We’ve had two days of bad inflation reports and the market hasn’t turned tail yet, so it’s likely that stocks will see some more upside in the near term. We’ll see how that theory pans out next week when expiry hedging unwinds, but the market’s resilience is a plus here. Still, we didn’t get the […]

Stocks pulled back Friday after a stronger than expected consumer inflation report raised fears that the Federal Reserve won’t be able to cut interest rates to stem the meltdown in the sub-prime mortgage market. Following a stronger than expected wholesale inflation reading on Thursday, the report virtually assured that the Fed will have to stand […]

Nice resilience by the bulls in the face of disappointing data today, but the lack of a strong upside move to cement a bottom raises the odds that the market will have to slosh around a while longer before it can put in a meaningful bottom. The S&P (first chart below) was stopped at its […]

Stocks managed to post modest gains Thursday despite the latest data showing rising inflation and a slowing economy. Wholesale prices rose much faster than expected last month, the government reported, while New York manufacturing was weaker than expected. The unsettling inflation data made traders uneasy ahead of Friday’s consumer inflation report, but stocks still managed […]

We have so many puts piling up that the bears can’t be right forever, but that doesn’t mean they can’t do some damage while they’re in control. We’re getting the retest of the lows we were looking for, but it’s coming a little faster and harder than we’d like, so we’ll look at a possible […]