HEXUS.sharewatch: Dell biggest gainer in flat week

Last Thursday brought the news that the two biggest economies in the Euro zone - Germany and France - had emerged from recession, growing by 0.3 percent in the second quarter. This morning Japan announced it had managed to grow by 0.9 percent in Q2, having been in recession for a year.

Global stock markets, however, have been unanimously underwhelmed by this news. The reason for this is probably that many of the factors that led those countries into recession in the first place, such as manufacturing over-capacity, low consumer and business confidence, massive levels of both public and private debt, etc, are all still in existence.

What this news possibly indicates is the short-term success of state stimulus packages. There has been an unprecedented confluence of loose monetary policy, corporate bail-outs and injections of capital through things like quantitative easing, so it would be pretty worrying if there hadn't been some kind of lift.

Among our tech stocks, things were pretty flat, with only Dell showing some perkiness. There was no seismic news from the giant system builder last week, although investors may have welcomed the news that Dell is saving itself millions of dollars from energy saving initiatives.

Then again, maybe everyone's getting all excited about its entry into the mobile phone market.