RSSTech stocks ride a roller coaster while Congress deliberates
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published October 1, 2008, 11:08 AM
One moment it's all doom and gloom, and the next it's brighter days ahead. But with Congress actually uttering the "D" word in place of the "R" word as debate on the bailout bill continues, the market now consistently lacks stability.
With Congress having taken yesterday off for the Bank Holiday, investors saw opportunities and potential bargains everywhere they looked, especially with Apple stock trading at a 16-month low. So injecting a much-needed dose of confidence back into the markets, the buyers came back yesterday, giving Apple an 8% boost, responding to what was the single largest Dow 30 point drop in history by looking forward to better times.
The NASDAQ index leapt back over the 2000 mark yesterday, rising 98.6 points to close at 2082 and change, and bringing many tech stocks up with it. Intel came back 8.5% to close at $18.73 per share, US shares in RIM surged 10.6% to $68.30, and AMD -- a tech issue to which the adjective "struggling" has seemed permanently affixed of late -- regained a tremendous 22.3% of its value to close at $5.25.
Apple's share value was helped when a Goldman Sachs analyst yesterday afternoon reportedly stated that the market's severe response to an earlier Goldman Sachs downgrade of Apple stock, was unwarranted.
What's going on? The undercurrent of uncertainty regarding the revised economic bailout plan, taken up by the Senate this morning (while the House continues its holiday), has every sector of the American economy in turmoil. Assuming a best-case scenario, the nation's credit markets will be tighter. Financing for small startups will be harder to come by, and financing for big firms to acquire small startups will be just as hard. That means research-driven companies like Cisco and HP may have to look more in-house for their innovations, but that'll be even more difficult as they implement already planned layoffs or consider new ones.
In a strange, "one-off" case, Google can ironically chock up computer error as the cause of what appeared to be extreme uncertainty during the close of trading yesterday. Orders for Google shares appeared to have been placed within a five-minute period straddling the top of the 4:00 pm EDT hour, whose value swings were as much as $25.
Reuters reports this morning that NASDAQ has decided to cancel trades committed during that period, resetting its closing value on the low side of the swing, at $400.52. That actually helped Google shares buck the negative trend this morning, with bargain hunters capitalizing and sending Google's value up nearly $7 by 11:00 am.
Panic? Nows the time to buy! Its a fire sale!
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|for a whole year bush was praying that the economic ship would not be taking in water until he was out of office......
but dag nabbit - the ship began sinking and now he wants congress to jump and bailout the water - right now.
perhaps, he should have claimed that wall street had "investments of mass destruction".
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|Tieing this to Bush reflects such an overly simplistic, yet typical worldview so common here.
Why not mention The City, who is credited, and has long been criticized for, developing and marketing the financial derivative products that have been blamed for much of the WORLD's financial crisis?
Not to mention that Clinton (at Greenspan's urging) signed the bill allowing US banks and financial institutions to enter into the uncontrolled derivatives market? Hmmm?
Or would such an awareness of such issues render your puny 'let's blame it on one man' position as untenable and idiotic?
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|Nice to see someone comment that actually understands what is happening.
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|Most people cannot be bothered to even begin to contemplate the possibility of the chance that anything could possibly have consequences that take more than 10 seconds to unfold.
Welcome to the ADHD Generation...
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|during the clinton era, times were financially sound and no one disputes this, not even the republicans.
the door they opened was to help those that were not benefitting from the era of financial gain, to give people a chance to own homes.
but instead of the home owners sticking to a fixed rate, they wanted an adjustable rate because everyone thought the interest rate would continue to go down.
it is the result of greed that made this mess. Greedy executives and the manipulative techniquese of the "Mark to Market" and the "Selling off of bad debt".
in doing so, banks made their books look financially clean and stable when the business actually made poor, bad financial decisions.
foolishly, you can not sell, re-sell and re-re sell bad debt. it is unethical and has shown that in the end bad debts will not be bought.
these are just a few of the financial tactics that make the books appear to look good, when in fact they should not be looking good. however, if the books look good, then the ceo's make big bucks and stock sells and big campaign contributions can be provided.
think i'm wrong? it is now a fact the banks no longer trust each other
because they all know from their own business practices how to pull the wool over one's eyes.
incidentally, the executive of wachova that said the company was financially sound a week before the bad economic news came out, should go to jail and return the 13 million he made in three weeks to the tax payor.
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|RELAX
RELAX
everything will be OK after the election. Life will be back to normal no matter WHO WINS. The fellows on sesame street will make money no matter what happens. Main street will always pay for it. life goes on people will die with no insurance, people will die with insurance.we have Jewish Holiday's and Christian Holiday's and my guess one day our good ole congress will take off for Mawlid al-Nabi (12 Rabi 1)
Prophet Muhammad's Birthday. and you know what poor people will still be poor and the Rich will still play the stock market.
Amen
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|And it was a Jewish Holiday. Why businesses and government still take days off for these voodoo/god-believers I can't understand. Doesn't matter if you call it Jewish, xian, or muslim.
Besides, this mostly affects commercial software like Microsoft. Open source software thrives in this economic environment. Time to let the market kill off fat and let the fittest survive.
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|Its a shame logic doesn't thrive as well...
When will Linux, the little UNIX clone written where neither Windows nor UNIX folks can recognize the file structure under competing GUIs that compete to see who can look most like the Windows desktop (so much for innovation!), not to mention a dearth of consumer ready applications (yeah, we know, there is Open Office!), finally take over the desktop?
Keep us posted. AFTER it happens. LOL!
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|"D word and R word" may be a bit nondescript, I'm guessing you mean depression/recession? It's only clever if people know what you're talking about ;)
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