These 2 Tech Giants Pulled the Nasdaq Back From the Brink Friday
This week has been a brutal one for the stock market broadly, and it's been especially painful for investors in the Nasdaq Composite (NASDAQINDEX: ^IXIC). Many Nasdaq stocks have found themselves at the epicenter of a vicious market rotation away from cutting-edge innovative technology stocks toward older-economy companies, and it looked like the index would suffer more losses early in the trading session. But stocks regained their footing, and by 2:30 p.m. EST, the Nasdaq was up more than 1%.
Even so, many of the high-growth stocks that led the Nasdaq higher in 2020 still had to deal with losses. Instead, some of the recent laggards in the Nasdaq were notable gainers on Friday. In particular, both Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) and Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) rose substantially, helping to pull the overall index higher.
It wasn't too long ago that many investors were just about to say that older tech companies like Cisco and Intel simply didn't have very good prospects for future stock performance. Popular innovation-focused investor Cathie Wood, who managed the ARK Invest family of funds to triple-digit percentage returns in 2020, singled out Intel as having lost its way as other microprocessor chip manufacturers passed its technology by. Meanwhile, Cisco had posted relatively weak results in recent weeks, with its core network infrastructure business slowed by pandemic-related issues.
Source Fool.com