Question: What do Barack Obama's plans for US bank reform and Chinese monetary policy have to do with the the technology industry? Answer: More than the performance of its own companies, if last week's shares are anything to go by.
The US President quite rightly pointed out last week that if banks are ‘too big to fail' then they shouldn't be so big. He also said retail banks shouldn't be allowed to gamble our money on things they don't understand, so he is proposing the break-up of many of the biggest US banks. Bank investors haven't taken the news well.
Meanwhile, figures show the Chinese economy going into overdrive and pretty much single-handedly fuelling the global recovery. The reason this is bad news for stock-markets is that China will almost certainly have to tighten monetary policy (raise interest rates) to prevent its economy from overheating. This will reduce demand from the world's biggest market.
These factors mean that, in spite of some better than expected results, markets were all down last week and they took our stocks with them. The biggest loser was AMD which, in spite of exceeding expectations for the last quarter, offered a downbeat forecast for this one.
To better reflect the scope of the coverage on HEXUS.channel, we decided our list was incomplete without tech giants Cisco, Nokia and Oracle. Cisco and Oracle are becoming ever-more relevant to consumers as they acquire companies like Pure Digital and Sun, respectively, while Nokia remains the world's biggest mobile phone handset maker, and has moved into netbooks.
Company | Listing | Share price 14/12/09 | Share price 21/12/09 | Share price 18/1/10 | Share price 25/1/10 | 7-day change | Market cap (bn) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
AMD | AMD | 8.64 | 9.05 | 8.89 | 7.88 | -11.4% | 5.28 |
Apple | AAPL | 194.67 | 195.50 | 205.93 | 197.59 | -4.0% | 177.97 |
ARM | ARMH | 8.04 | 8.25 | 9.22 | 8.94 | -3.0% | 3.82 |
Avnet | AVT | 28.39 | 29.09 | 28.09 | 27.08 | -3.6% | 4.10 |
Cisco | CSCO | N/A | N/A | N/A | 22.97 | N/A | 132.14 |
Dell | DELL | 13.12 | 13.74 | 14.40 | 13.65 | -5.2% | 26.71 |
GOOG | 590.51 | 596.27 | 580.00 | 550.01 | -5.2% | 174.50 | |
HP | HPQ | 50.05 | 51.50 | 52.47 | 49.29 | -6.1% | 116.53 |
IBM | IBM | 129.68 | 127.91 | 131.78 | 125.50 | -4.8% | 164.41 |
Ingram Micro | IM | 17.24 | 17.39 | 17.64 | 17.27 | -2.1% | 2.83 |
Intel | INTC | 19.90 | 19.63 | 20.80 | 19.91 | -4.3% | 109.94 |
Microsoft | MSFT | 29.85 | 30.24 | 30.86 | 28.96 | -6.2% | 257.14 |
Nokia | NOK | N/A | N/A | N/A | 12.72 | N/A | 47.16 |
Nvidia | NVDA | 15.21 | 16.82 | 17.11 | 16.46 | -3.8% | 9.13 |
Oracle | ORCL | N/A | N/A | N/A | 24.15 | N/A | 121.02 |
Qualcomm | QCOM | 44.90 | 44.56 | 48.53 | 46.78 | -3.6% | 78.14 |
Tech Data | TECD | 45.44 | 45.98 | 45.30 | 43.44 | -4.1% | 2.21 |
Dow | .DJI | 10471.50 | 10328.89 | 10609.65 | 10172.98 | -4.1% | N/A |
FTSE 100 | .FTSE | 5261.57 | 5196.81 | 5455.37 | 5302.99 | -2.8% | N/A |
NASDAQ | .IXIC | 2190.31 | 2211.69 | 2287.99 | 2205.29 | -3.6% | N/A |