HEXUS.sharewatch: ARM added to list as quarterly earnings hit Microsoft and AMD

The Dow Jones topped 9,000 last week for the first time since January and the NASDAQ threatened 2,000 for the first time since early October 2008, in what has been a strong two week rally.

In what was generally a pretty positive week for tech stocks, only two companies saw a significant fall in their share prices. It's no coincidence that they both announced disappointing quarterly earnings during the week.

Microsoft seemed to surprise pretty much everyone by announcing revenues that fell short of expectations by around a billion dollars. Meanwhile, there was a greater predictability to AMD revealing its 11th consecutive quarterly loss.

Both companies blamed the slowdown in PC sales for the drop in revenue.

This is a trend that may continue beyond the end of the global recession if UK chip designer ARM has its way. An ecosystem of chip makers that use ARM designs is hoping the market will move away from the Wintel (Windows on Intel architecture) paradigm that has dominated personal computing for thirty years.

For this reason we've decided ARM should join the largest member of its ecosystem - Qualcomm (which saw its own share price affected by negative news last week) - on our list. For the sake of continuity, we're using ARM's NASDAQ listing.