A strong rally in stocks came unglued Monday after SanDisk CEO Eli Harari told Reuters he sees record high oil prices hurting consumer technology spending.
Harari made his comments in an interview at the JP Morgan technology conference in Boston. He said memory chip pricing has stabilized, but there are still inventories to work through.
Harari’s comments sent the Nasdaq from a 1% gain to a 0.5% loss and SanDisk (NASDAQ: SNDK) shares to a 7.5% loss. The Dow and S&P ended the day with modest gains.
Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) ended the day little changed despite the prospect of renewed talks and an ad deal with Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT). Microsoft shares lost 1.8% on the news. A late report from Reuters said Microsoft may buy Yahoo’s search business.
Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) was a big gainer, jumping 7.6% on a Goldman Sachs upgrade, and Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN) added 2% on a Citigroup upgrade.
Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) gained 3.5% on a positive report in Barron’s.
The Nasdaq lost 12 to 2516, the S&P rose 1 to 1426, and the Dow gained 41 to 13,028. Volume declined to 3.68 billion shares on the NYSE, and 2.28 billion on the Nasdaq. Decliners led by a 16-14 margin on the NYSE, 16-12 on the Nasdaq. Upside volume was 51% on the NYSE, and 38% on the Nasdaq. New highs-new lows were 167-61 on the NYSE, and 81-96 on the Nasdaq.
