Paul Shread

Technology earnings reports continued to roll in late Thursday, with Broadcom and McAfee beating estimates and Gateway shares falling after the company reported a 9% sales decline. Broadcom and McAfee shares gained in late trading after the two companies reported double-digit sales growth that beat Wall Street expectations, but Gateway shares fell 11% after the […]

News that Cisco raised guidance for not one but two quarters gave tech stocks a nice boost on Wednesday, but blue chips were torn between strong fourth-quarter productivity gains and hawkish comments from a Federal Reserve official. Cisco gained 3% on the day, but finished 2% off its high, paring its gains as blue chips […]

Cisco (first chart below) appears primed for another test of its post-2002 high of 28.99-29.39; if it can clear that level, the stock could be headed for 38, duplicating its initial 21-point rise off the 2002 low. But with the rest of the market facing resistance and Cisco along with it, a pause here seems […]

Cisco reported another solid quarter late Tuesday, beating Wall Street estimates and raising guidance. Cisco’s earnings of 33 cents a share beat estimates by two cents, and sales rose 27% to $8.4 billion, also ahead of Thomson Financial forecasts. CEO John Chambers said he expects 19-20% sales growth in the current quarter, ahead of 17% […]

Less than a year after announcing a partnership with Archivas, Hitachi Data Systems is acquiring the archiving startup (see HDS Makes a Case for CAS). Archivas bills itself as “the open alternative” to EMC’s Centera CAS platform, according to Archivas CEO Gary Voight. Enterprise Strategy Group analyst Tony Asaro said the deal moves HDS into […]

If you’re looking for a reason for the Nasdaq’s recent underperformance, look no further than Cisco (first chart below). After testing a multi-year high last month, the stock fell 11% before recovering half that loss. The 50% retracement level is a common countertrend move, and in this case, it also comes right in the middle […]

Cisco will report quarterly results late Tuesday, and analysts expect another solid quarter from the networking giant. Wall Street analysts are expecting earnings of 31 cents a share on sales of $8.28 billion, up 25% from the year-ago quarter, according to Thomson Financial, and many expect Cisco to beat the published estimates. But with the […]

The Dow Transports (first chart below) finally followed the Industrials to a new closing high, although we’d argue that Dow Theory still remains on its primary buy signal from mid-2003. Still, it’s a positive based on the old theory that products need to move in commerce, so the Industrials and Transports moving up together is […]

Stocks were mixed Friday after Amazon.com’s better than expected results and the government’s monthly jobs data weren’t quite enough to sustain the market’s three-day rally. Amazon’s earnings, sales and forward guidance exceeded forecasts, but the company’s falling operating margins continued to concern analysts, prompting a Bear Stearns downgrade Friday morning and countering a Piper Jaffray […]

MonoSphere says it can save storage users a bundle. The startup says its storage capacity management software, Storage Horizon 3.0, released this week gives companies a unified view of current and projected storage capacity usage, so IT organizations can develop storage capacity plans, maximize utilization of existing storage and reduce capital expenditures. The new version […]

The Nasdaq (first chart below) continues to frustrate, failing to take out 2471 resistance today. Until the Nasdaq can demonstrate some relative strength, blue chips appear to be the better bet. Support for the techs is 2452-2458. The S&P (second chart) is nearing resistance at 1450 or so here. The index has put in bullish […]

Another win for the bulls today; market internals weren’t exactly inspiring, but it still counts. Blue chip breakouts have been sold in recent weeks; for this one to be different, we’ll need more participation from the Nasdaq (first chart below), which has been generally lagging since November and needs to get back above 2471 or […]