HEXUS.sharewatch: Bailout bounce short lived

Biggest gainer and chart

By far the biggest gainer has been Microsoft, which has seen the value of its shares jump by nearly nine percent in the past week. The biggest reason for this was Microsoft's announcement of a $40 billion share buyback plan, but the reversal of a $1.5 billion damages ruling against it and in favour of Alcatel-Lucent for alleged MP3 patent infringements in the Windows Media Player, won't have done it any harm either.

The only other gainers of note are Dell, which announced it plans to outpace HP in sales (doesn't it always? - Ed) and NVIDIA, which announced the resolution of a class action lawsuit alleging that it colluded with ATI to fix the prices of graphics cards for five years.

Breaking news this morning reports talks over the weekend involving both US political parties have finally come up with a bailout package that they're both relatively happy with. Now it just needs to be approved by Congress. If that happens be might see another mini-bounce, but then again you never know - especially these days.