Here's a blurb from Reuter's Story tonight:
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...Western Digital said it also plans to further accelerate
its transition to desktop and enterprise system hard drives
featuring magneto-resistive head technology.
"I'm actually taking this as a positive announcement," said
analyst David Takata at Gruntal & Co.
Takata said Western Digital had previously asserted it
would continue to ramp up disk drive production this quarter,
something that would have caused further problems for the
sector as a whole. ***With Western Digital now keeping production flat it will give the disk drive market a chance to settle.***
<<NOTE:THIS IS BULLISH FOR QNTM>>
When profits were at record highs for disk drive makers all
manufacturers added capacity skewing the delicate supply/demand
balance and eroding profits. The problem was worsened by the
addition of new entrants into the market.
"This industry hangs on a supply and demand balance and
over the last couple of quarters there has been too much
high-end capacity coming on line, and in this quarter there is
too much capacity period from the high end to the low end, and
that's the problem in a nutshell," Takata said, adding that he
***sees the problems as short term.***
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Looking at the large-block sell-orders going through, I think a fund just used this announcement as an excuse to clear more of their QNTM positions...to what I'm not sure, but I heard Fidelity was dumping just about all of their tech holdings...Compaq was mentioned in particular, by a fund analyst.
As far as I could tell with PC Quote 6.0 this morning, there was a lot more smaller-block buying (100 to 5000 shares) than selling, but prices never went up because of the large block sell orders (15,000 to 150,000 shares). As far as I know, it means a lot of individual investors bought this stock today, and believe this stock to be a good investment. But a fund holding a large stake seems to be actively clearing this stock, and not allowing it to move up.
At least this is the impression I get from watching the real-time trades go by...
Sam |
