We're into negative territory across the board in this week's HEXUS.sharewatch, with gloomy sentiment all-round leading to a big drop in the Dow, NASDAQ and FTSE 100.
However, even allowing for a general fall of five percent or so, tech stocks seem to have performed particularly badly.
The biggest faller was Dell, with a drop of a massive 19 percent in the value of its shares. However, it must be noted that last week's HEXUS.sharewatch took data from close of play on the 28th rather than the 29th, so most of Dell's price drop occurred immediately after it announced below-expectation quarterly earnings.
At least Dell had a reason; Intel's shares have dropped 12.6 percent and NVIDIA's by 11.2 percent in the last eight days and they don't appear to have done anything wrong. Apple, IBM and Microsoft are all down around eight percent.
As with the rest of our list, the fall is probably a product of the overall market movement and extra concern at the tech sector prompted by Dell's disappointing performance.
A significant silver lining for this particular cloud may well be the bail-out of the two US mortgage giants - Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac - by the US tax payer.
The phenomenon underpinning the current bear market is the collapse of the US housing market brought about by over-risky lending over the past few years. Any time a big lending institution looks like it's in trouble, this has an effect on the overall market. So the knowledge that Fanny and Freddie are going to be OK will provide some reassurance.
The FTSE 100 is currently up around 200 points - close to four percent - on the news and it is hoped that US markets will behave similarly.
| Company | Listing | Share price 8/8/08 | Share price 15/8/08 | Share price 28/8/08 | Share price 5/9/08 | 8-day change | Market cap (bn) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AMD | AMD | 5.13 | 5.64 | 6.25 | 5.96 | -4.6% | 3.62 |
| Apple | AAPL | 169.55 | 175.74 | 173.74 | 160.18 | -7.8% | 141.90 |
| Avnet | AVT | 30.46 | 31.00 | 30.16 | 27.42 | -9.1% | 4.12 |
| Dell | DELL | 25.00 | 25.06 | 25.21 | 20.41 | -19.0% | 39.97 |
| GOOG | 495.01 | 510.15 | 473.78 | 444.25 | -6.2% | 139.69 | |
| HP | HPQ | 45.82 | 45.59 | 47.33 | 44.96 | -5.0% | 110.88 |
| IBM | IBM | 128.81 | 126.36 | 124.58 | 114.33 | -8.2% | 154.90 |
| Ingram Micro | IM | 19.60 | 19.95 | 19.22 | 17.82 | -7.3% | 2.96 |
| Intel | INTC | 24.23 | 24.26 | 23.59 | 20.61 | -12.6% | 115.87 |
| Microsoft | MSFT | 28.13 | 27.81 | 27.94 | 25.65 | -8.2% | 234.19 |
| Nvidia | NVDA | 11.00 | 12.96 | 13.14 | 11.67 | -11.2% | 6.50 |
| Tech Data | TECD | 35.75 | 35.24 | 34.57 | 32.97 | -4.6% | 1.66 |
| Yahoo | YHOO | 19.90 | 20.44 | 19.65 | 18.08 | -8.0% | 25.06 |
| Dow | .DJI | 11734.32 | 11659.90 | 11715.18 | 11220.96 | -4.2% | N/A |
| FTSE 100 | .FTSE | 5354.70 | 5454.80 | 5601.20 | 5240.70 | -6.4% | N/A |
| NASDAQ | .IXIC | 2414.10 | 2452.52 | 2411.64 | 2255.88 | -6.5% | N/A |
