It appears the institutional investors are getting out. A lot of traders are pushing against this trend, but at the end of the day when people dump their position we see the price fall because that is the net trade balance of the actual trend. While no one knows where the bottom is, the attached chart shows the volume-by-price distribution of the past 5 years. The current price near $25.00 is at about the 50% point of the distribution. This is where many people due to behavior will start to fade the trend, probably resulting in a temporary rally. Near $24.00 is another support level where it may stop or slow down. However, near $23.25 is the 25% point of the distribution, where I start to consider it a good deal. Once the institutional money and the resulting loss prevention from individual investors stabalizes, it will tend to rally towards at least the 50% price point ($25) and begin the accumulation cycle once again to an unknown maximum price, estimate $28-30. I was considering buying some LEAP options at the 25% price point (LEAPs to avoid time decay). In the short term, the anticipation of a rally or fall through support means that buying short- to mid-term option straddles might be appropriate.
People don't like Vista. MS would have had a goldmine in releasing an updated XP. Instead they came out with Vista, which has major incompatibilities with older software, even XP generation. So now what people do, they rather stay with XP, and 'slipstream' updated XP installation disks themselves in order to keep XP up to date, instead of upgrading to Vista. All this is money lost to MS. For example I have an original Windows XP Pro (without service packs, from years back), well it was no problem slipstreaming the SP3 into it, with additional drivers for modern hardware. Cost=$0. I don't need to upgrade, I don't want to upgrade to Vista. XP memory footprint is 1/5th of Vista and everything works just fine, even old software from Win98 days. There's nothing in Vista I need, and I seriously question if there's anything anybody needs. XP presents over 6 years of accumulated purchased software and user skills. Why would anybody want to throw these away? Sure the software vendors would love it if people upgraded all their software just because of Vista... Vista is so incompatible that one could switch to Linux just as well. Cost=$0 for a net download Linux.
Something else to consider is MS losing their supremacy over the hardware market. Since most OEMs like Dell have a pre-load agreement with MS, you can't buy a bare system (no OS) without paying the so-called Microsoft or Windows Tax. In fact finding an OEM that sells bare systems where you only pay for the hardware is very difficult. You basically have to build your own in most cases. The MS tax is gradually being eroded away as more and more users demand Linux for their computers. In fact, France mandated a rebate to customers who didn't want Windows on their computers. For once the French did something I agree with.
My point here in terms of stock price is that it looks like short-term traders or daytraders are "catching the falling knife" but I'd be wary to long the stock at its current price as the "big money" is dumping their stocks. I don't really care about the news; I just view it as the normal stock cycle playing out. In terms of Vista I have it on my secondary hard drive completely seperated from XP, but I can boot on it by switching the boot drive. I absolutely hate the new interface, even when set to look more like XP; the file manager is actually what I hate most. Stupid things like making flipping the folder icons to make it look different and not being able to get rid of certain window panes (pains). The only purpose to Vista is to run DirectX 10 to improve video card performance on newer cards because there is no comparable upgrade in XP due to the way it was designed. I was using it to play PS2 games on my computer so I could save game states and do other tricks, but ultimately I just ended up buying a new PS2 due to emulator crashes and the fact that the CPU is actually the limiting factor now. Vista is only useful if you absolutely need the video card power maxed out, but only hardcore gamers really care about "max res with all effects" and I don't really care that much. XP is solid. XP is good. Vista = crap. Nuff said.
With the chairthrowing ballzer running the shop and now Bill is out of the picture that is like the fox guarding the henhouse without supervision from the parole officer keeping a keen eye. I would not touch that stock for a buy/hold portfolio.