US bailout failure hits consumer-oriented tech stocks hardest

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 30 September 2008 05:30

Opinion and Analysis

The sell-off following the US House of Representatives' rejection of the so-called bailout bill has not treated all tech stocks equally. Which parts of the industry are suffering the worst, and which are faring relatively well?

The plan to rescue the troubled US financial industry had bipartisan support but was voted down on Monday afternoon.

As Davey Winder reported for iTWire, the stock market fell by $US1.2 trillion dollars, with the tech sector dipping by just under 9 percent compared with 7 percent for the more general Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Hmm... it seems that public opinion had been mobilised to oppose President Bush's bailout plan. So rather than see the government spend $700 billion, they saw the shares that back their retirement funds and their kids' college funds drop by $1200 billion.

Does that sound like a good deal to you? Someone's benefiting from all this, but you can bet it isn't Mr and Ms America.

But back to the tech sector. Let's look at how four prominent but very different tech companies - Apple, Google, IBM and Microsoft have fared.

Apple went from an closing price of $US128.24 on Friday to $US104.23 in after-hours trade on Monday, a drop of almost 19 percent.

Please read on for the rest of the figures.