From Briefing.com
Tech Stock Analysis
General Commentary
Warning season ending with a monumental thud, as evidenced by the nasty guidance provided by EMC Corp. (EMC 22.10 -7.93) and Advanced Micro (AMD 20.80 -7.84) prior to last Friday's open... Magnitude of warnings more shocking than actual confessions, as both companies operate in industries experiencing problems... Severity of misses combined with bearish forward outlooks prompted investors to flee other "iffy" stocks, such as IBM (IBM 106.38 -5.72), Brocade (BRCD 31.90 -8.87), Veritas (VRTS 57.01 -5.25), Ciena (CIEN 30.99 -3.55) and Sun Microsystems (SUNW 13.68 -1.49).
Added to the earnings misery was a larger than expected drop in nonfarm payrolls (fell 114k v. consensus estimate of -40k)... Disappointing jobs report, while not the primary reason for Friday's breakdown, certainly weighed on investor sentiment, as data temporarily put to rest talk of an economic recovery.
All in all, couldn't have asked for an uglier combination of events - especially on a summer Friday in a holiday shortened week.
In the end the Nasdaq tumbled back to within a whisker of 2000... While 2000 is a psychological floor, more important support is in the 1974 area... We've noted for some time the significance of this level (50% retracement of Apr-May rally)... Best case scenario - this floor holds and prices start edging up next week as we complete the transition from warnings to earnings season... However, should this floor give way, we could see a dip back to the 1900-1885 area... In our view this is the worst case scenario and still an unlikely event... Nevertheless, after Friday's drubbing we would be remiss if we didn't highlight the near-term downside risk.
Earnings tone this week to be set by DoubleClick (DCLK 13.38 -0.17), Yahoo (YHOO 17.88 -1.31), Motorola (MOT 15.37 -0.64), Redback Networks (RBAK 7.70 -0.66), Sonus (SONS 19.40 -1.90), Advanced Micro (AMD 20.80 -7.84), Juniper (JNPR 26.65 -1.85), Rambus (RMBS 10.16 -0.49) and RSA Security (RSAS 26.59 +0.48)... For consensus estimates, actuals, year-ago comparisons and percent change in sales, see Briefing.com's
Robert Walberg
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