Oracle Leads Tech Tumble — Thursday’s IP Market Recap

by Marc Bastow | March 21, 2013 4:35 pm

[1]Weak earnings in an important tech bellwether provided the impetus for a major sell-off in the sector. That, combined with disappointing jobs[2] and home sales[3] reports and continued concerns about Cyprus, brought Wednesday’s rally to a thudding end.

By the end of the day the tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped 0.97% to close at 3,222.60, while the S&P 500 fell 0.83% to 1,545.80 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average sagged 0.62% to end at 14,421.91.

Shares of enterprise software developer Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL[4]) dove almost 10% on trading of over 100 million shares after the company announced lower top- and bottom-line results[5] for the most recent quarter.

The news bled all over technology stocks in the Dow, as Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO[6], -3.83%) and IBM (NYSE:IBM[7], -1.3%) turned in ugly performances. Even Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ[8]) took a tumble, dropping over 2% despite announcing a 10% increase in its dividend[9].

Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO[10]) managed to avoid the tech-sector carnage, rising over 3% after announcing it bought Jybe, a company that offers recommendations based on social networking data, and is in talks to buy[11] a stake in video sharing site Dailymotion.

Despite rumors that the Pentagon will pull support for users[12] of thousands of its devices, shares of Blackberry (NASDAQ:BBRY[13]) continued to rise. The company announced it has more than 100,000 BB10 apps[14] available for users.

KB Home (NYSE:KBH[15]) shares moved ahead over 2% after the company reported sales surged 59% in the first quarter, as more homes were delivered and prices increased.

Finally, Lululemon (NASDAQ:LULU[16]) rebounded slightly from its yoga-pants problem[17] after reporting earnings and sales managed to climb past estimates, gaining 1%.

Three Up

• Supervalu (NYSE:SVU[18]): Up 11.69% (49 cents) to $4.68
• 3D Systems (NYSE:DDD[19]): Up 3.91% ($1.15) to $30.57
• Ross Stores (NASDAQ:ROST[20]): Up 3.35% ($1.88) to $58.05

Three Down

• Guess (NYSE:GES[21]): Down 7.20% ($1.94) to $25.01
• Airgas (NYSE:ARG[22]): Down 5.22% ($5.39) to $97.96
• Radioshack (NYSE:RSH[23]): Down 4.76% (18 cents) to $3.60

Marc Bastow is an Assistant Editor at InvestorPlace.com. As of this writing, he is long YHOO.

Source URL: https://investorplace.com/2013/03/thursdays-ip-market-recap-orcl-ibm-csco-hpq/

---