This week starts out like last week–down; will it end with a rally?

This week starts out like last week–down; will it end with a rally?

At the close today the Standard & Poor’s 500 was off 0.66%. The Dow Jones industrial Average was lower by 0.29%. The NASDAQ Composite had fallen 1.255 and the NASDAQ 100 had dropped 1.55%. The small cap Russell 2000 was down just 0.03%. The iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (EEM) finished with a loss of 1.33%. As you might conclude from those results from the indexes, the big culprit in today’s retreat was technology, especially big technology stocks.

2020 keeps getting worse for Intel

2020 keeps getting worse for Intel

First, it was Apple (AAPL) moving away from Intel (INTC) chips in its entire line of Mac computers. Apple’s own new M1 chip has received positive reviews that support the company’s claims that its machines with the new chip out perform standard Intel or Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) PCs. Now, Microsoft (MSFT) is working on in-house processor designs for use in the servers that run the company’s cloud services. The software giant is using designs from Arm Holdings (in the process of being acquired by Nvidia (NVDA) for $40 billion) to produce a processor that will be used in its data centers. Microsoft is also exploring (which means, I think, that the effort hasn’t gone as far as “working on”) developing another chip that would power some of its Surface line of personal computers. The move by Microsoft would be a big deal.