Optimism in the numbers will be a roadblock for further gains. The upside in tech is limited. |
People might be delaying some purchasing decisions and in the short-term, that's considered a negative. |
Potential customers have more faith and confidence in the financial health of IBM. |
Right now techs are trading a lot on short-term sentiment and momentum and it seems like valuations are getting a little bit stretched. We're probably approaching a short-term top. |
Share buybacks are just a necessary financial function in modern markets, something you have to do almost regardless of stock price. It's almost like paying your bills. |
Software companies have sold off aggressively but some information technology managers have indicated a willingness to spend in that area. |
The market will take any good news it can wrap its arms around so if Dell offers some encouragement that might mark a short-term bottom for tech. But it has to say some positive things about the spending environment, which isn't likely since there is no incentive to be overly optimistic. |
There could be a bit of the January effect. Some end-of-the-year profit taking [is creating] buying opportunities. |
There's a tremendous translation advantage for techs that get a lot of revenue overseas, but you have to look at these gains as one-time events since the dollar can't decline forever. |
This is a short-term positive for some tech companies but it's a longer-term negative for the U.S. economy. |
This uncertainty about what Microsoft is going to do with the cash has been hanging over the stock for a couple of years. A buyback would be a signal that management is optimistic with the price of its own stock. |
Valuations remain a little stretched, and we could see some further weakness into the early part of the year. |
We'll probably trend a little bit lower [in the next couple of weeks]. A lot of the gains have been on positive comments made by companies like Dell and IBM, but I think a lot of this reflects market-share shifts rather than a recovery in the overall market. |
We're already starting to see valuations get stretched again. It's not unlikely that we can get back close to 1,700 on the Nasdaq, but I don't think that's necessarily justifiable. That's just a function of trading psychology in the short run. |
When you consider alternatives such as Linux, arguments in favor of Windows are not as appealing. This worm was basically an exercise to show off the flaws in Microsoft security and Microsoft didn't fare too well. |