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Friday, May 17, 8:13 AM Thomas Lee lifts his year-end S&P 500 (SPY) forecast to 1,715 from 1,580 as the bull has already outrun his expectations. His team sees clues economic performance is picking up, including the outperformance of semiconductors (XSD) vs. transports (IYT), and the steepening of the 10 year/30 year Treasury curve. Risk/reward is particularly appealing in tech (XLK), healthcare (XLV), and financials (XLF). Comment!
Monday, April 29, 12:13 PM "Which has a higher P/E - Procter & Gamble (PG) or Google (GOOG)," asks the WSJ's Tom Lauricella. Enthusiasm for anything with yield has driven the P-E ratios of dividend payers (DVY) like P&G maybe way too high. Techs (XLK) with double-digit earnings growth, no debt, and massive cash balances trade at 12x, says MFS' James Swanson, while a utility (XLU) in Ohio is at 16x. "How far do you go with this game?" "Pretty far," says Templeton's Donald Taylor. "The macro environment (causing this) is not at all likely to change anytime soon." 7 Comments [Quick Ideas]
Friday, April 26, 8:34 AM The beginning of a bigger move? Two of the year's three strongest performing sectors - healthcare (XLV) and consumer staples (XLP) - are down on the week as the three weakest sectors - energy (XLE), materials (XLB), and tech (XLK) - post gains of 3%-4.5%. 2 Comments
Thursday, April 11, 7:03 PM The pace at which new technologies are disrupting companies makes it dangerous to be a value investor, argues VC Ashvin Bachireddy. As mobile devices, cloud software, e-commerce, and much else upends old business models, investing in a BlackBerry or an OfficeMax/Office Depot due to a low P/E can prove painful. "While there may still be opportunities for value investing, you need to be cautious of businesses that appear to be on a slow decline." His remarks seem prescient in light of what happened today to several PC-related names with low multiples. 14 Comments [Tech, Consumer, Quick Ideas]
Wednesday, April 3, 1:58 PM Gartner forecasts global IT spending will grow 4.1% this year to $3.8T; that represents a pickup from 2012's 2.1% growth. Hardware is expected to grow 8% to $718B as mobile strength offsets PC/printer weakness, and enterprise software 6.4% to $297B. Gartner: "The global steady growth rates are a calm ocean that hides turbulent currents beneath ... there are clear winners and losers over the next three to five years, as we see more of a transition from PCs to mobile phones, from servers to storage, from licensed software to cloud, or the shift in voice and data connections from fixed to mobile." Comment! [Tech]
Wednesday, March 27, 12:47 PM "For the 1st time in long time I have begun to short big-cap techs," tweets high-profile tech newsletter writer Fred Hickey. He refers to the market's recent gains as " a dangerous, unsustainable Fed-induced rally." Last month, Hickey offered a downbeat view on tech stocks in Barron's, citing high multiples and weak PC, mobile phone, and enterprise IT demand. 2 Comments [Tech, Quick Ideas]
Tuesday, February 26, 6:55 PM Company-specific risk for tech stocks is at its highest level in 5 years, claims Morgan Stanley's Adam Parker. He thinks this "typically this bodes well for alpha generation in the technology sector," and suggests investors focus on individual equities rather than sector/thematic plays. Meanwhile, Bespoke observes 28 out of 70 S&P 500 tech stocks (40%) now yield more than 2%, giving them a payout above that of 10-year Treasurys. STX tops the list at 4.9%, followed by INTC at 4.35%. 2 Comments [Tech, Quick Ideas]
Tuesday, January 15, 6:39 PM S&P 500 tech companies are expected to report a 1.1% Y/Y drop in Q4 earnings, their first decline since Q3 '09, per Thomson Reuters. A chip industry downturn, weak PC and home electronics sales, and (important given the company's size) Apple's expected EPS decline are all playing a role. Nonetheless, low valuations for many tech names have attracted bargain hunters; Merrill believes tech stocks are collectively undervalued by 32% on a forward P/E basis, and claims every tech industry outside of IT services is trading at a historical discount. 3 Comments [Tech]
Monday, January 14, 9:24 AM "Within tech, we think that prospects of a potential bottoming in consensus estimates are improving ... relative safe haven stocks could be used as a source of funds," writes JPMorgan's Mark Moskowitz, explaining why he's downgrading EMC (EMC -1%) and IBM (IBM -1%) while upgrading H-P (HPQ +1.6%) and Fusion-io (FIO +6.1%). Apple and NetApp are his top large-cap picks, and Fusion-io, which he argues continues to "hold the pole position in server-side data acceleration," is his top small/mid-cap pick. EMC has already seen a raft of negative sell-side notes. Comment! [Tech, Quick Ideas]
Monday, December 17, 2012, 2:40 PM The tech sector is "trading at a discount to the market for the first time in 20 years," notes Merrill, which advises going overweight on tech stocks (along with energy and industrial names). Barclays portfolio strategist Barry Knapp also sees tech doing well in 2013. More cautious is JPMorgan's Mark Moskowitz, who forecasts 2013 IT spending growth of just 1.7% amidst weak demand for PCs (mobile cannibalization) and servers (the sales lift provided by virtualization is slowing down) (Marc Andreessen) Comment! [Tech, Quick Ideas]
Wednesday, December 12, 2012, 9:34 AM "If (tech's) a bubble, it's the weirdest bubble I've seen," says Marc Andreessen, speaking at a conference. The current situation is more like a tech depression, he argues, noting tech stocks are trading at the sort of discount to industrials that hasn't been seen since the 1970s. "The public market is trading tech like a steel mill that's about to go bankrupt ... What is going on?" 5 Comments
Tuesday, November 20, 2012, 9:46 AM Divergence in tech land: BAML's weekly check (h/t Raj Dhaliwal) of net buys of technology stocks by client shows the heaviest-ever buying by institutions against nearly the largest-ever selling by private clients. So funds were buying Apple last week as individuals were selling? 3 Comments [Tech]
Friday, October 19, 2012, 3:26 PM Take comfort or get worried, but the tech correction - the XLK is off about 7% since hitting an 11-year high a month ago - is catching the eye of the technicians and trend-followers. Tomi Kilgore says the index is only a hair above its 200-day moving average. Never one to miss a move, Dennis Gartman always pays attention when market leaders "suddenly lose their stripes." Comment! [Quick Ideas, Tech]
Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 9:16 AM Corporate insiders get even more bearish, the Vickers sales-to-buys ratio rising to 5.61:1 from 3.8:1 at the start of September. The deterioration comes from Nasdaq issues, where the ratio jumped to 6.17:1 from 2.96:1. Perspective: The long-term average is 2-2.5:1. One year ago, with stocks gasping for air, insiders weren't sellers - the ratio dropped to 1.04:1. 6 Comments
Wednesday, October 3, 2012, 7:20 AM Negative earnings preannouncements (4 of them for every 1 positive release) are running at such a high rate as to bring back memories of the 2000-01 tech bust to Strategas Research. The market is stuck between easy money and lousy fundamentals, says Weiss' Mike Larson. 6 Comments [Tech]
Saturday, August 25, 2012, 10:00 AM Southern Co. (SO) and Verizon (VZ) may be the "poster children" among high dividend-payers as the quest for yield takes the utility (XLU), telecom (IXP), and consumer staples (XLP) sectors to frothy levels. The flip-side are health-care services (XHS), autos (CARZ), housing (IYR), and tech (XLK) - lower payers, but with relative valuations that have rarely been this cheap. 17 Comments [Quick Ideas]

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ProShares Ultra Technology ETF