HEXUS.sharewatch: HP stock hit by Hurd resignation

The real shame about the decision of former HP CEO Mark Hurd to resign, after misstating expenses in an apparent attempt to disguise his relationship with an HP contractor, is that he was doing a pretty good job.

After the turmoil of the Fiorina era, Hurd steadied the HP ship and also presided over some well-received acquisitions. He also steered HP through the credit-crunch era with some extensive cost-cutting and general austerity. So it comes as no surprise to see investors react negatively to news of his departure.

While all the HP share-price activity occurred late last Friday, the timescale for this HEXUS.sharewatch is three weeks instead of the usual one, due to a holiday taken by your otherwise tireless editor.

This broader snapshot is generally positive. Having dropped below psychologically significant levels a month ago, the Dow and the FTSE have consolidated their recoveries in the past three weeks. Several tech companies have experienced healthy gains, with ARM jumping on the back of good earnings and Nokia up in spite of not so good ones.

The only other major faller was NVIDIA, which lowered its forecast for the next quarter citing poor demand. It also appears to be weakly positioned as AMD gets ready to join Intel in the integrated CPU/GPU game. Having said that Intel fell a bit, possibly in response to new restrictions imposed following its settlement with the FTC.