HEXUS.sharewatch: double-dip fears drive shares down

It can't be much fun being a fund-manager right now. There's no shortage of economic data around, but what to make of it is another thing entirely, and there's enough negative data to make talk of a double-dip recession a regular fixture in the business press.

The general tone of much of the economic news is that the recovery is continuing, but only just. This was echoed by the Bank of England in its quarterly inflation report, and within the tech industry we saw cautious outlooks from the likes of networking giant Cisco. On the other hand, Germany's economy is experiencing record growth.

Cisco itself seems to have been pretty heavily punished for its caution, despite the fact that much of the reason for it is broader economic factors outside of its direct control. The perceived weakness of the PC market hit many tech stocks hard too, with AMD's plunging by almost 13 percent last week.

As you can see it was red across the board last week, with most of our companies falling by more than the index average. Distribution giant Avnet is entitled to feel somewhat aggrieved at losing almost ten percent of its value, having posted record results for the quarter, while IBM and Qualcomm performed relatively well in a difficult environment.