Tech Stocks Stabilize Distributors Post Gains

Signs of the recession ending are few and far between, but Wall Street appears to have reached a stable position as the major indexes had a week without wild fluctuations. For the week ending Dec. 19, the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended down 50 points, which is far better than the triple-point week-over-week loses of the past two months.

The technology sector stocks were mixed for the week. Of the 90 stock prices tracked by Channel Insider, 21 technology vendors and 28 solution providers ended the week in positive territory.

Among the technology vendors and distributors, Ingram Micro was the big winner. The world’s largest technology distributor closed the week up 12.2 percent. Other distributors posted gains, as well, with Tech Data closing up 8.2 percent and Synnex up 6.8 percent. 

In a week where Nortel (NYSE:NT) announced 100 GBE traffic over 100G wavelength, industry analysts continued to speculate on an early bankruptcy for the Canadian telecommunications giant. Nortel’s stock continued to slide this week to $0.22, a 45 percent loss for the week.

Seagate Technologies (NASDAQ:STX) previously announced that its U.S. offices would close from Dec. 22 to Jan. 5 in an effort to cut expenses. The bad news continued for the hard drive manufacturer when the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) agreed to continue an investigation into “alleged patent violations related to semiconductor integrated circuits. “ Seagate’s stock closed down more than 13 percent.

OfficeMax (NYSE: OMX) closed the week up 27 percent after it announced the suspension of quarterly cash dividends on the company's common stock. "Suspending the common stock dividend will result in annual savings of approximately $45 million and is consistent with the actions we've taken during 2008 to reduce costs and enhance liquidity, including recently announced staff eliminations and other cost reduction initiatives," said OfficeMax CEO Sam Duncan.

All eyes will be on Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) as it announces their third quarter earnings today. Morgan Stanley’s “equal weight” rating of the software solution company took the stock up on Friday to close at $12.37 an increase of more than 6 percent from the prior week. Red Hat has struggled with its stock since June, dropping almost 50 percent in value.

The following are the leading publicly traded vendor and solution provider stocks tracked by Channel Insider.