Tech Stocks Need More Spark Than Just M&A
Author: Brendan Conway</br></br>Investors may be asking too much if they think the recent spate of deal making will be enough to finally ignite technology stocks.</br></br>Hewlett-Packard launched a bidding war Monday to wrest data-storage company 3Par from Dell, but technology stocks largely failed to respond. The Nasdaq Composite Index fell Monday and technology stocks were among the Standard & Poor's 500-share index's worst performers.</br></br>Macroeconomic worries appeared to drown out the boost that merger-and-acquisition activity provided Monday, at a time when technical analysts see the sector as primed for a rally off recent lows. The upshot may be that while M&A activity certainly provides a boost for stocks, it isn't necessarily the panacea that many investors had hoped for.</br></br>Mergers certainly looked like a big boost last week. Technology stocks were showing encouraging signs last week amid efforts like Intel's $7.7 billion bid for McAfee Inc. The S&P 500's technology components started to turn around what had been a tough August, in which they were notable underperformers.