Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 30 September 2008 06:30
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 3
For IBM, the figures were $US119.42 to $US112.97, or 5.4 percent down.
Google went from $US431.04 to $US385.00, that's a fall of 10.7 percent.
And Microsoft's share price fell from $US7.40 to $US25.30, or by 7.7 percent.
It seems to me that the market isn't particularly worried about IBM or Microsoft, as both stocks fell by less than the average. Google and especially Apple fell more substantially.
Of the four stocks we're looking at, Google and Microsoft picked up
slightly in after-hours trading, while the other two continued to fall.
It could be that investors and speculators are working on the assumption that business expenditure won't be hit too hard by whatever turmoil is ahead. It's all relative, of course - a 5 percent drop in just over a day is still substantial.
So companies such as IBM and Microsoft are being sold off to raise funds or rebalance portfolios, but are perhaps being snapped up by those who feel businesses will continue to spend on software, services and larger computer systems.
So what of the consumer IT sector? See
page three.
