Three IBD 50 stocks are hitting new highs in the stock market today : Valeant Pharmaceuticals (VRX), Regeneron Pharmaceuticals (REGN) and NetEase (NTES). A Goldman Sachs report issued Thursday includes Valeant in the top 5 hedge fund long positions, along with Actavis (ACT), Apple (AAPL), Facebook (FB) and Microsoft (MSFT). And reports said Wednesday that Valeant is in advanced talks to buy Egyptian drugmaker Amoun Pharma. Valeant climbed 2.2% in
While the personal computer market is declining, Google (GOOGL) Chromebook sales are on the upswing.Worldwide sales of Chromebooks are on pace to grow 27% this year to 7.3 million units, research firm Gartner (IT) said Thursday. By contrast, PC sales, dominated by Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows operating system, are forecast to fall 2.4% to 306.3 million units, Gartner said. Education is the primary market for Chromebooks, accounting for 72% of sales in 2014. “Since the first model launched in mid-2011, Google’s Chromebook has seen success mainly in the education segment across all regions,” Gartner analyst Isabelle Durand said in a statement. Chromebook purchases in the commercial market remain low despite interest from small and midsize businesses and vertical industries, Durand said. Google is increasingly targeting the business segment with its Chromebook for Work suite of office productivity applications and has improved access and functions by making more…
Salesforce.com (CRM) fell Wednesday afternoon, undercutting a recent breakout buy point before its earnings report after the close, due to key rival SAP (SAP) ruling out a takeover. Salesforce is the top provider of customer relationship management software. It competes against Oracle (ORCL), SAP (SAP) and Microsoft (MSFT), among others. On April 29, media reports said Salesforce was mulling options after receiving takeover inquiries. The stock