Paul Shread

The Dow and S&P (first two charts below) will face a familiar test tomorrow at upper channel lines that have limited blue chip gains for the last 3-4 months. If the indexes can clear 12,800 and 1460 tomorrow, stocks could be off to the races; if not, the indexes could find themselves back within the […]

Microsoft shares slipped in late trading Thursday after CEO Steve Ballmer said analysts may be expecting too much from the new Vista operating system. In a presentation to financial analysts, Ballmer said Vista sales estimates are “overly aggressive,” according to Reuters, comments that sent Microsoft shares about 1% lower in late trading. Ballmer also said […]

From major support to major resistance in two days; the yo-yo market continues. The Dow and S&P (first two charts below) are right back at the upper channel lines that have been cause for a pause for the last 3-4 months. If recent trading history holds, the indexes should bump up against the lines for […]

Better than expected results from Applied Materials and soothing words from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke sent stocks soaring on Wednesday. AMAT shares gained 4% after the company gave a stronger than expected sales and order outlook, sending the chip sector 2% higher. Buying really picked up after Bernanke said in congressional testimony that the economy […]

Even when the market goes up, the Nasdaq (first two charts below) manages to fall even further behind the blue chips. It’s been a tough couple of months for tech investors. The big question after today is whether the lows have been seen for this pullback. Our answer is a qualified “likely” — but we […]

Applied Materials shares surged 5% late Tuesday after the chip equipment giant beat Wall Street profit forecasts and raised expectations for the current quarter. AMAT’s pro forma quarterly earnings of 29 cents a share were two cents better than expected and up 20 cents a share from the year-ago quarter. Sales rose 23% to $2.28 […]

Yosemite Technologies on Tuesday added laptop and desktop data protection to its product lineup with the acquisition of FileKeeper. FileKeeper’s near-CDP offering for desktops and laptops complements Yosemite’s server-based offerings and reaffirms the company’s commitment to the small and mid-sized business market, said Yosemite CEO George Symons, who was CTO of EMC before taking the […]

The pullback still hasn’t done much in the way of technical damage, but it doesn’t have far to go if it’s going to cause some. The S&P (first chart below) is about 4 points above its November channel line here, a level the market needs to hold to avoid tipping the advantage to the bears. […]

Priceline.com gave hope to a listless stock market late Monday with much higher than expected quarterly earnings. The company’s pro forma earnings of 58 cents a share were a whopping 18 cents above analysts’ forecasts, according to Thomson Financial. Sales rose 28% to 260 million — nearly 10% higher than anticipated. Priceline said the results […]

Sepaton is moving its virtual tape (VTL) and de-duplication technology down market (see Sepaton De-Dupes Customers). Boasting 150 to 300 MB/sec performance or faster and 25 to 1 or greater data compression, Sepaton’s products include the S2100-ES2 DeltaStor data de-duplication appliance for large enterprises and S2100-DS2 DeltaStor appliance for small to mid-size data centers. The […]

Today’s pullback is very much in keeping with market’s pattern of the last few months: a bump up against the upper channel lines on the Dow and S&P (first two charts below) followed by a pullback. This pullback may last a few more days, but unless those rising channels break to the downside, we’ll continue […]

A warning from Micron Technology and hawkish comments from Federal Reserve officials sent stocks to their worst weekly loss in two months Friday. Micron’s warning of steep declines in memory chip pricing this quarter sent its stock 3% lower and the rest of the chip sector with it. Rising oil prices and comments from Fed […]