[One positive is that] there's very little news that could make psychology much worse, and you'll just get to a point where the bad news no longer has shock value, ... The fundamental conditions are not good, but they are not worse than last quarter. We won't have that disappointing a quarter. The growth of tech is about to turn positive. |
A lot of the best news is associated with the PC industry. Intel has been not just a bellwether in the sense that it's big, but in the sense that technology as an industry has returned to positive year-over-year growth rates, and technology as an industry tends to be delivering more upside surprises than downside surprises these days. Intel started to do that earlier and more substantially than the rest of technology. |
Any technology spending recovery follows a simple principle: things that are easiest to do without come back last, |
At this point, boring makes for an interesting fourth quarter. I think this year's losers win. The stuff that people chucked from their portfolios is what they will want back. |
At this point, I think the stock is essentially pricing in the idea that they will find a way to screw it up. And as a result, my recommendation to investors is that they stick a clothespin on their nose and go ahead and buy it, |
At this point, I think the stock is essentially pricing in the idea that they will find a way to screw it up. And as a result, my recommendation to investors is that they stick a clothespin on their nose and go ahead and buy it. |
Clearly there are a lot of industries in tech that are just begging to be consolidated. So the question is not whether the pace of M&A picks up in 2005 but whether it will represent a breaking of the dam. |
Companies in the technology sector are clearly overcapitalized and they are going to be increasingly forced by investors to make decisions about their cash, |
Consolidation activity is actually a signal that service providers are scared and will start spending money again. Equipment companies are long-term beneficiaries of this and frankly, I think that's what the bond market is smelling out, |
Here we are seven days into the new quarter, and the pre-announcement season has been extremely mild, |
How these companies sound isn't a terribly good basis for investing right now, ... The fact is that in an incremental cyclical recovery, capital spending will recover at a brisker pace than the overall recovery, and technology spending will recover at a faster rate than capital spending. |
HP's problems with services are not uncommon. IBM has had issues like that, too, of late. The larger problem with tech today (Friday) and in the last month has been that improvement in semiconductor capital equipment, like Applied Materials, doesn't transfer over to the rest of the tech sector. While tech fundamentals are turning, the evidence of that has been slow coming. |
I think that is clearly helping Microsoft, ... When I look at this big move, I am really thinking that people are afraid of missing out on something. That is what we are seeing here. |
IBM is one of these big bellwether companies where their business is so solid that in a year like 2001, where everybody was missing, IBM never missed a quarter. |
IBM was one of many companies that were good at managing expectations in a period where investors were conditioned to expect earnings surprises. |