The stock market finished its best quarter in 11 years on a down note Wednesday, but Jabil (NYSE: JBL) was a standout in the tech sector.
Jabil shares gained 9 percent after the contract manufacturer beat Wall Street estimates and raised its earnings and sales guidance. That could be good news for Jabil customers like Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) and HP (NYSE: HPQ).
But Micron Technology (NYSE: MU) shed 2 percent despite its own better than expected quarterly results.
The broader market fell on news that Midwest manufacturing unexpectedly contracted in September. Larger than expected job losses in the ADP report also set the stage for national manufacturing and employment reports that will be released on Thursday and Friday.
Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) was another weak name, but several tech stocks managed to follow Jabil higher.
Juniper (NASDAQ: JNPR), Flextronics (NASDAQ: FLEX), Sanmina (NASDAQ: SANM), Symantec (NASDAQ: SYMC), Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO), VMware (NYSE: VMW) and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) were among the stocks climbing on the day.
Technology earnings reports won’t begin in earnest until the week of October 12, when Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) and IBM (NYSE: IBM) will be among the names offering insight into the state of technology spending.
The Nasdaq slipped 1 to 2122, the S&P 500 lost 3 to 1057, and the Dow fell 30 to 9712. Volume rose to 5.17 billion shares on the NYSE, and 2.69 billion on the Nasdaq. Decliners led by a 20-16 margin on the NYSE, and 17-10 on the Nasdaq. Upside volume was 41 percent on the NYSE, and 53 percent on the Nasdaq. New highs-new lows were 242-32 on the NYSE, and 88-18 on the Nasdaq.
