This morning looks fine on Wall Street. Hewlett-Packard beat profit estimates for the quarter ended in October by 4 cents. At $0.41 a share, earnings were up 14% from last year on a revenue gain of 7.7%. The company said revenues this quarter will be higher than Wall Street thinks and that earnings will be on target. That’s good news for the tech sector, and good news for readers of this page as I’ve been suggesting technology stocks and funds for several months now.
I wrote on November 11th that I hoped to buy more shares of Maxtor at $3.50 “before it lurches above $4.” The stock closed yesterday at exactly $4 after hitting a high of $4.03. This morning it’s up 10 cents premarket. Keep in mind, this is after the bad news came out Monday that Maxtor’s CEO suddenly quit. If the stock can do this well on that news, imagine what it’ll do when a few things go right.
The broader market is happy to hear that Sears and Kmart are merging to form the nation’s third-largest retailer. Who knows whether two struggling stores can combine to make one successful store. The more pertinent point to those of us not invested in either of them is that a merger of that magnitude is happening at all. Mergers and acquisitions are a positive sign, yet another bull pushing against the corral fence.
As a reminder, you can track all of my past and current suggestions on the strategies page. Specifically, you can follow Maxtor here and my popular Double The Dow portfolio here.
