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Strategies & Market Trends : LindyBill's Ballroom -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stomper who wrote (116)	10/3/2001 4:15:36 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 248

Software investors buy on possibility of a bottom Wednesday October 3, 3:24 pm Eastern Time NEW YORK, Oct 3 (Reuters) - Software stocks rallied for a second straight day on Wednesday after expected warnings on third-quarter results failed to materialize and investors moved in to scoop up cheap shares of once highly valued stocks. ``I think people were looking for some aggressive preannouncements,'' said A.G. Edwards & Sons software analyst Mary O'Rourke. For the most part, those warnings did not materialize. ``Typically if a software company is going to warn they do it on the Monday or Tuesday after the quarter closes,'' Chuck Phillips, Morgan Stanley's top software analyst told Reuters. ``I think there's a feeling that many of them have already guided low enough and are going to come with their range for the third quarter.'' Phillips said. Standard & Poor's computer software index rose more than 7 percent in midday trade -- as bargain hunting, short covering and traditional long-term investment purchases helped drive big gains is stocks such as Interwoven (NasdaqNM:IWOV - news), i2 Technologies (NasdaqNM:ITWO - news), Siebel Systems (NasdaqNM:SEBL - news), Mercury Interactive (NasdaqNM:MERQ - news) and PeopleSoft (NasdaqNM:PSFT - news). ``It's more of what started yesterday -- a sentiment that the bottom is near and the market is oversold,'' Banc of America Securities analyst Bob Austrian told Reuters. Interwoven -- which warned on Tuesday that it would miss third-quarter expectations -- rose $1.94, or more than 46 percent, to $6.15. The rise was fueled, in part, by news that it had struck a multimillion-dollar deal with computer giant International Business Machines (NYSE:IBM - news). Software stalwarts were also posting significant gains. Storage management software vendor Veritas Software (NasdaqNM:VRTS - news) was up $3.78, or about 19 percent, at $23.68 Software giant Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) gained $3.13, around 6 percent, to $56.18. Business management software maker PeopleSoft rose $3.62, or about 18 percent, to $24.16, while selling and customer service software vendor Siebel Systems climbed about 17 percent, or $2.59, to $17.65. Kash Rangan of Dain Rauscher Wessels said software stocks had been oversold on fears that results from the third quarter, which ended Sept. 30., would be hard hit by last month's terror attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. Oracle (NasdaqNM:ORCL - news), Peregrine Systems (NasdaqNM:PRGN - news) and SAP AG were among the enterprise software vendors with undervalued stocks, Rangan said. All were trading higher on Wednesday. Elsewhere, President George W. Bush said his administration was also weighing a range of tax cuts to help spur business investment. The president singled out investment tax credits. Another leading option would allow businesses to write off more quickly purchases of software, computers and other equipment. When asked whether that proposed $60 billion to $75 billion economic stimulus package was helping to boost stocks, Dain Rauscher Wessels analyst Rangan said: ``I can't comment specifically on that, but let's face it, any news is good news at the moment.'' _________________________________