By Rex Crum, MarketWatch
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Tech stocks started Monday
largely in the red, with losses from Facebook Inc., IBM Corp. and
Pandora Media Inc., and as the broad market fell on concerns about
the government shutdown.
Facebook (FB) slipped by 33 cents a share, to $50.69, after
Raymond James analyst Aaron Kessler trimmed his rating on the
social-networker's stock to outperform from strong buy. In a
research note, Kessler said he made the move largely on valuation
matters. Kessler also raised his price target on Facebook's stock
to $56 a share from $38.
IBM (IBM) was off by almost 1%, at $182.69 a share. Ben Reitzes
of Barclays cut his rating on IBM's stock to equal-weight from
overweight, saying in a research note that IBM could see some of
its business affected by threats from cloud computing and software
as a service, also called SaaS.
Among other leading tech stocks, Pandora (P) was off by 2.5%, at
$26.82, Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) shares gave up 1.5%, to trade at
$20.93, Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) shed 1.3%, to slip to $314.76, and
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) was trimmed by almost 1%, to $33.56 a
share.
The Nasdaq Composite Index (RIXF) managed to erase most of its
early losses, but was still down by 11 points at 3,796. The S&P
500 (SPX) was off 0.4% on growing concern that the ongoing
government shutdown, which entered a second week, would begin to
have more of an impact on investor sentiment as the next round of
quarterly earnings reports approaches.
Gains came from Apple Inc. (AAPL), which rose almost 2% to
$491.71. Jefferies analyst Peter Misek raised his rating on Apple
to buy from hold, and lifted his price target on the stock to $600
a share from $425. In a research note, Misek said that he made the
moves following a trip to Asia where he met with several Apple
suppliers.
BlackBerry Inc. (RIMM) rose almost 4%, to $7.98 a share,
following a report late Friday that said the smartphone company is
in talks about possibly selling parts of itself to Cisco Systems
Inc. (CSCO), Google Inc. (GOOG) and SAP AG (SAP).
Outerwall Inc. (OUTR), which runs the line of Redbox
video-rental kiosks, was up almost 5%, at $59.83 a share after
activist investment fund Jana Partners disclosed it has acquired a
13.5% stake in the company.
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