By Kate Gibson
As U.S. stocks on Friday tallied another week of declines, the
technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index remained positive for the
year, ahead of next week's earnings reports from some of tech's
major players.
On Friday, telecommunications and energy shares paced Wall
Street's declines, with information-technology and industrial
issues fronting the limited gains; the market finished mostly down
for the day.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) stood at 8,146, off 36.65
points, or 0.5%, giving it for a weekly fall of 1.6%. The S&P
500 Index (SPX) shed 3.55 points, or 0.4%, to 879.14, a slide of
1.9% from the week-ago close. The finish marked the fourth down
week in a row for the Dow and S&P.
The Nasdaq (RIXF) gained 3.48 points, or 0.2%, to end at
1,756.0, off 2.3% for the week, its second consecutive weekly
slide.
On Monday, semiconductor maker Novellus Systems Inc. (NVLS) is
scheduled to report its results, while chip giant Intel Corp.
(INTC) is slated to report second-quarter results on Tuesday.
Intel, the world's No. 1 maker of computer microprocessors, is
expected to report a sharp drop in sales and earnings.
But investors are more likely to be tuned into what the
company's executives say about the business outlook.
"The market will be looking at Intel's sales and margin
guidance. The linkage between production and inventory has
stabilized the chip sector, but the market will want to see signs
of accelerating end demand to keep stock prices trending higher
from the spring low," said Nick Kalivas, equity analyst at MF
Global Research.
On Friday, hardware companies including Dell Inc. (DELL) drew an
upgrade from Goldman Sachs analyst David Bailey, who expects
hardware stocks "to continue to move higher through the second half
of the year and into 2010 as fundamentals from stabilization to
growth [as well as] multiples begin to normalize." .
But Harry Rader, chief executive and portfolio manager for Rady
Asset Management, has a far more bearish take on the economy and
technology, which has outperformed other sectors, leaving the
Nasdaq up more than 11% since 2009 began.
Conversely, the Dow industrials are off 7.2% for the year so
far, while the S&P 500 is down 2.7% for the same period.
The only difference between tech and other market sectors is
that "technology has been in favor; a number of the stocks have
gotten way ahead of themselves," said Rader.
Rader believes the stock market is ripe for a rotation "out of
technology and into something else," and lists BMC Software Inc.
(BMC) and Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC) as among the tech stocks
now being shorted by his firm.
Citrix Systems Inc. (CTXS), Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ), Motorola
Inc. (MOT), McAfee Inc.(MFE), Palm Inc. (PALM) and Teradata
Corp.(TDC) also will be on Rader's list of short candidates "if
they moved up another 3% to 5%," he added.