HEXUS.sharewatch: eerie calm descends on markets

The many challenges facing the world in these interesting times were put into perspective this morning in the UK as it snowed, a bit.

Yes, it's at times like this that we're forced to sit back and take stock of what's really important. The fact that it's now slippery on the roads and pavements puts everything in perspective and it's only right that schools, airports and public transport be closed as we decide on the best response to this new threat.

Mercifully there was no such high drama in the stock markets last week, at least not the bits we follow. In fact things were almost ‘normal' as a few companies were up, a few were down and the indices were pretty flat.

The most dramatic movement was from distributor Ingram Micro, which lost seven percent of its value after an analyst downgrade on Friday. The other two disties on our list went in opposite directions as Tech Data followed suit, while Avnet was up six percent.

Avnet has a more service oriented offering than the other two, so it could be that this business model is considered to be better suited to weathering the current storm (economic) than one more centred on product and credit.

The second biggest loser of the week was Dell, which closed close to the ten year low of $9.30 set last November. The global plunge in PC spending seems to have hit Dell hard and rumours that it's poised to enter the smartphone market seem to have elicited little enthusiasm from investors.