Paul Shread

Tech stocks were back in favor with investors on Wednesday, and eBay kept the momentum going after the bell with better than expected results. eBay shares leapt 10% in late trading — on top of a 5% gain during the day — on fourth quarter sales that rose 29% to $1.72 billion, ahead of $1.67 […]

The Federal Trade Commission has signed off on the merger of Brocade and McData, clearing the way for the Fibre Channel switch vendors to take on Cisco. The companies announced late Tuesday that the FTC has closed its antitrust review of the proposed merger and that the waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act has expired. […]

Investors cheered solid results from Sun Microsystems late Tuesday, but Yahoo and AMD got a chillier reception for their earnings reports. Sun shares jumped 7% in late trading after the company’s earnings of 3 cents a share and sales of $3.57 billion — up 6% from the year-ago quarter — beat estimates. A $700 million […]

EMC ended 2006 on a strong note, with better than expected earnings and sales across all product lines. Midrange hardware and software were two of the categories that carried EMC in the quarter, as the company continued its recovery from a rocky first half of 2006. EMC CEO Joe Tucci said 2006 was “somewhat disappointing” […]

Just about everything turned lower today, as Nasdaq underperformance dragged the rest of the market down with it. On the plus side, financials fell much less than the rest of the market, which can be a sign of underlying strength, and with strength tonight in chip stocks — another sensitive sector — downside may be […]

Storage vendors spent Monday jockeying for position with midrange customers, with Adaptec and Hitachi Data Systems moving their products upstream and Isilon unveiling a lower-cost system. Clustered NAS vendor Isilon Systems unveiled the Isilon IQ 200, which at a list price of $39,000 sells for half the cost of the company’s enterprise line. While Isilon’s […]

Not a bad day at all for the Nasdaq (first chart below), which managed a modest gain despite disappointment over IBM’s results, but it wasn’t enough to avoid a sell signal under Gerald Appel’s relative strength indicator (second chart), and the index ended the week back inside its two-month trading range. Disheartening developments, and while […]

Stocks managed to close with slight gains Friday despite disappointing results from two of the Dow’s biggest names: IBM and GE . Investors continued to find fault with otherwise solid earnings reports, shaving 3% off IBM shares on concern about the company’s profit margins amid rising sales and acquisition expenses and higher services revenues. Margin […]

No way to paste a smiley face on today’s action. The Nasdaq (first chart below) gave up its recent breakout at 2471 and could easily end tomorrow with a weekly sell signal under Gerald Appel’s relative strength indicator (second chart). This may be nothing more than selling the news after some very nice gains, but […]

IBM posted better than expected results late Thursday, but tech investors showed no signs of letting up after two days of heavy selling in the sector, sending Big Blue’s shares 5% lower in after-hours trading. IBM’s fourth-quarter sales rose more than 7 percent to $26.3 billion, beating $25.7 billion forecasts, and earnings of $2.26 a […]

Apple gave investors reeling from Intel’s earnings report reason for hope late Wednesday. Apple’s quarterly earnings of $1.14 a share were well above 78-cent estimates, and 24% sales growth to $7.1 billion beat $6.42 billion forecasts. iPod sales of 21 million also blew past analysts’ estimates, but Mac sales of 1.6 million were a little […]

Intel posted better than expected results late Tuesday, but its shares fell in after-hours trading on news of continued price pressures. Intel’s fourth-quarter earnings of 26 cents a share, or $1.5 billion, were down from 40 cents a share in the year-ago quarter, but a penny better than expected. Sales declined 5% from the year-ago […]