A Matter Of Time

The message
over the past week
has been that the technology complex simply needs
more time to rebuild and mend the technical damage done from March through May.

Signs of this have included the Nasdaq
Comp’s Friday repenetration of its prior two-week trading range in addition to
moderate decay in a number of growth stocks.

As for the latter, the sagging action
in I Two
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, Verisign
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, Check Point
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, Mercury
Interactive
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, Sapient
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, and Copper Mountain
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,
is to be noted, among others.

All of this may seem obvious, yet
conversations I’ve had with a number of people in the past week indicate that
expectations appear to have gotten ahead of themselves.

Yes, this is an intermediate advance.

But, no, it is not like the others
we’ve seen over the past year or more.

And, once again, the reason is that
the extent of the damage done to tech is much more intense than anything
witnessed in recent years.

Technically, the nagging question mark
in the market is the uninspired level of activity, something that, if remedied,
would certainly go a long way toward clearing the air — one way or the other.

This lack of volume is beginning to
manifest itself in the inability of a number of glamours to clear short-term
resistance points and stay above them.

As I’d mentioned Friday, EMC
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,
Intel
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, Oracle
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, and Nortel
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are the bells that I’m
watching like a hawk.

Nokia
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, also, yet its status
as a failure has already been exposed…Tuesday, it fell on above average trade
for the fourth day in a row. 

As for EMC
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, it lost ground
for the sixth day.

Nortel
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was distributed for the
second time in four days.

Elsewhere among the benchmark set,
Texas Instruments
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fell for the fourth consecutive session.

Among the names, Tuesday’s hehavior in
Cree
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was just another case of a stock sagging a bit more than
desirable following the clearing of a short-term high.

Ditto for Analog Devices
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.

Micrel
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has also pulled
back more than desired.

Triquint Semi’s
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distribution session was just another chink in the chip segment’s armor.

Otherwise, Network Appliance
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continues to base-build constructively.

Redback
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is a great example
of how the best stocks make themselves tough to buy coming off a market
correction.

Sepracor’s
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volume has
steadily dried up as it works on a four-month base.

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