Last week, economic news was plentiful and a positive market force;
however, one tech titan managed to steal some of the thunder. Cisco Systems
garnered the most attention on the corporate front. Peter Cardillo, chief
strategist at Global Partners Securities, said in a Reuters piece, "The Cisco
numbers came in better than expectations, and the real emphasis is that they
do see a turnaround." The technology bellwether rallied, pulling the tech
sector up with it. Also igniting interest was the firm's forecast for higher
current-quarter revenues and its chief executives' optimistic outlook. "The
recovery appears to be slowly gaining momentum but is still fragile in the
minds of our customers . . . I'm more optimistic going into this quarter than
I was going into the last quarter." Also, graphics chipmaker Nvidia impressed
investors with stronger-than-expected revenue growth and a current-quarter
sales outlook that is set to beat expectations. On the economic front,
productivity surged during the third quarter, while the ISM report showed that
manufacturing expansion continued in October. Still, later in the week,
trading was in limbo ahead of October's employment report. When that release
did hit the market, investors could not help but feel the missing economic
link of job recovery was finally falling into place. "If the market can't make
a big jump on these numbers then there are a lot of people in a state of
denial," said Paul Cherney, chief market analyst at Standard & Poor's
Marketscope, to Reuters News. "This blows expectations out of the water." Non-
farm payrolls surged, adding 126,000, while the unemployment rate hit a six-
month low of 6.0%. Also, August and September's payroll figures were upwardly
revised. Although still far off the mark from a true labor recovery, the
employment data finally seems to be pointed in the right direction.
High-Tech Monday Update is provided courtesy of Thomson Financial. This
information is believed to be true and accurate; we take no responsibility for
inaccurate information and reserve the right to update our reports. For more
information, please visit our web site at http://www.thomson.com/financial.
SOURCE Thomson Financial Corporate Group
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