There was a raft of economic indicators last week, with both positive and negative news for us to digest. However, the general vibe seems to be that the recession has very much bottomed out and economic activity is on an upward curve once more.
Giant system builders Dell and Acer both released quarterly earnings which, while they were significantly down on a year ago, provided some grounds for optimism that demand is picking up.
While Dell's shares gained nearly ten percent last week after exceeding analyst expectations with its quarterlies, the big gainer was chip maker AMD, which saw its share price rise by over 20 percent over the course of the week.
A big reason for this will have been a Citigroup analyst upgrading AMD from ‘hold' to ‘buy' at the start of the week. But an upward revision of its Q3 forecast by rival Intel will probably have made investors more optimistic about the semiconductor sector in general, and thus further improved AMD's position.
Company | Listing | Share price 10/8/09 | Share price 17/8/09 | Share price 24/8/09 | Share price 31/8/09 | 7-day change | Market cap (bn) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
AMD | AMD | 3.70 | 3.69 | 3.70 | 4.47 | 20.8% | 2.98 |
Apple | AAPL | 165.61 | 166.78 | 169.22 | 170.05 | 0.5% | 152.33 |
ARM | ARMH | 6.32 | 6.20 | 6.30 | 6.47 | 2.7% | 2.73 |
Avnet | AVT | 25.04 | 24.30 | 25.29 | 26.91 | 6.4% | 4.07 |
Dell | DELL | 13.20 | 14.20 | 14.49 | 15.93 | 9.9% | 31.13 |
GOOG | 457.10 | 460.00 | 465.24 | 464.75 | -0.1% | 147.13 | |
HP | HPQ | 43.54 | 44.09 | 44.78 | 44.76 | -0.0% | 106.81 |
IBM | IBM | 119.33 | 118.57 | 119.90 | 118.22 | -1.4% | 154.97 |
Ingram Micro | IM | 16.69 | 16.49 | 16.72 | 17.08 | 2.2% | 2.78 |
Intel | INTC | 18.50 | 18.77 | 18.89 | 20.25 | 7.2% | 113.36 |
Microsoft | MSFT | 23.57 | 23.70 | 24.41 | 24.68 | 1.1% | 219.92 |
Nvidia | NVDA | 13.71 | 13.43 | 13.93 | 14.73 | 5.7% | 8.07 |
Qualcomm | QCOM | 45.99 | 46.15 | 47.29 | 47.22 | -0.1% | 78.49 |
Tech Data | TECD | 34.97 | 34.39 | 36.83 | 39.00 | 5.9% | 1.96 |
Dow | .DJI | 9370.07 | 9321.40 | 9505.96 | 9544.20 | 0.4% | N/A |
FTSE 100 | .FTSE | 4731.56 | 4713.97 | 4850.89 | 4908.90 | 1.2% | N/A |
NASDAQ | .IXIC | 2000.25 | 1985.52 | 2020.90 | 2028.77 | 0.4% | N/A |