Paul Shread

Technology investors got some welcome news after the bell on Thursday, with Micron , Red Hat and Research in Motion all delivering better than expected quarterly results. Improved pricing helped Micron’s earnings of 25 cents a share beat estimates by a nickel. Sales were up16% to $1.58 billion, just below $1.64 billion forecasts. Micron said […]

Seagate Technology is moving into online backup with the $185 million acquisition of EVault. EVault will become part of the Seagate Services group, which includes data recovery, online backup/recovery and archiving for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs). “Today’s announcement highlights a strategic next step into services, which is a natural extension of Seagate’s core business […]

The market continues to look like it may need to give a little more before the rally can resume. The S&P (first chart below) faces resistance at 1426 and 1432, and support is 1421, 1414 and 1410. The big round number of 12,500 stopped the Dow (second chart) today. Support is 12,420, 12,360 and 12,300. […]

Accenture shares rose in late trading Wednesday after the consulting and services firm delivered better than expected results and guidance. Accenture’s earnings of 46 cents a share were four cents ahead of estimates, while sales rose 14% to $4.75 billion, well ahead of $4.51 billion forecasts. The company’s forward guidance was also better than analysts […]

We’ll score today for the bulls: despite some pretty bad news, blue chips managed to end the day with gains. The one problem for the blue chips here is the short-term count: since the late November lows, we have three legs up interrupted by a sharp and flat correction — it sure looks like five […]

Blue chips escaped with gains Tuesday despite surging wholesale inflation, a Thai currency scare and an unexpected loss that sent Circuit City shares tumbling. Tech stocks might have followed blue chips into the green, but a 4.5% loss in shares of Oracle weighed on the sector. Oracle reported quarterly results late Monday that were in […]

Xyratex has reached a tentative agreement with Ario Data Networks to acquire key assets from the RAID and JBOD controller startup. After shedding its RAID and bridge businesses, Ario Data plans to shift its focus to storage systems, a market it entered earlier this year, according to Ario marketing vice president Mark Pollard. UK-based Xyratex […]

Traders have turned cautious in the last couple of days as the market becomes more selective. Time will tell if the sudden pattern of selling rallies is anything more than a short-term correction, but the good news is we are about to enter one of the most positive stretches of the year for stocks. The […]

Oracle reported quarterly results late Monday that were largely in line with Wall Street expectations. Oracle’s sales grew 26% to $4.16 billion, and earnings rose 18% to 22 cents a share, both matching estimates. Software sales rose 23% to $3.2 billion, with database and middleware new license sales up 9% and applications new license sales […]

For storage vendors, 2006 will be remembered as the year the sector returned to favor on Wall Street. Isilon and Double-Take both successfully completed initial public offerings on Friday, bringing to four the number of storage companies that have gone public this year. Along with Riverbed and CommVault , the storage companies are the first […]

News that consumer inflation was unchanged in November gave investors yet another reason to buy on Friday. Still, stocks hit their best levels of the day shortly after the open, then spent the rest of the day paring those gains, as traders locked in profits on the quarterly expiration of options and futures. Adobe was […]

Quantum entered the data de-duplication market this week, using technology picked up in its August acquisition of ADIC. It is the first product implementation of Rocksoft’s de-duplication technology, which ADIC had acquired in March, just a few months before ADIC was itself acquired by Quantum. It is also the first joint Quantum-ADIC product. Quantum’s new […]