Technology

Oversold Tech Momentum High-Flyers May Be Ready to Bounce

Last year and the early part of 2014 was all about the momentum trade. There was so much fast money chasing hot tech IPOs and tech darlings that the market kept feeding on itself and going higher. In a scene reminiscent of the late 1990s and the 2000 tech meltdown, when the day of reckoning came, the selling started and turned into a tsunami. In a new research note out from UBS, the technology team has identified five former tech names that have been absolutely destroyed in the sell off and could be ready for a trading bounce.

The analysts screen for stocks in their coverage-related universe for which price and/or volume have hit extremes relative to the previous 90-trading days. Here are five former super-hot tech names that could be ready for a trading bounce.

FireEye Inc. (NASDAQ: FEYE) was absolutely eviscerated in the sell-off. The stock is down an incredible 72% from its high that was hit just a short two months ago. The company provides products and services for detecting, preventing and resolving advanced cybersecurity threats, a theme that was huge last year. Despite the massive punishment inflicted on the stock, it will continue to be something that governments and businesses continue to focus on with laser precision. The Thomson/First Call estimate is posted at a whopping $52.20. FireEye closed Thursday at $27.45. That is down from a high of $97.35 in early March.

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Nimble Storage Inc. (NASDAQ: NMBL) made its IPO debut back in December and has been crushed back below the original offering price after doubling. Nimble has developed a hybrid storage architecture engineered from the ground up to seamlessly integrate flash and high-capacity drives. Yet another huge leap in storage technology that many people who need more capacity than older enterprise systems have embraced. The consensus price target for this stock, which has been shot down in flames, is $50.96. Nimble closed trading Thursday at $20.55. The stock printed $58 in early March.

Rackspace Hosting Inc. (NYSE: RAX) is another stock that was absolutely pummeled. The company took off as many investors embraced the cloud storage revolution and bought the top stocks in the sector. In fact, the company bills itself as the global leader in hybrid cloud and founder of OpenStack, the open-source operating system for the cloud. The consensus price target is $45.42. Rackspace closed Thursday at $26.64. That is down from a high of over $80 in January of 2013.

Splunk Inc. (NASDAQ: SPLK) call option volatility is at record highs, and the stock is another top tech name that has been absolutely crushed. Splunk reported total revenue of $99.9 million, up 53% year-over-year. The company’s guidance for the current quarter was also quite good. Splunk expects total revenue between $78 million-$80 million, a year-over-year jump of 40%. With those kinds of solid revenues, the company could start to look attractive to investors. The consensus price target is a gigantic $100.96. Splunk closed Thursday at $46.65.

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QLogic Corp. (NASDAQ: QLGC) has been absolutely hammered over the past month. The company designs and supplies high-performance server and storage networking infrastructure products that provide, enhance and manage computer data communication. Its products facilitate the transfer of data and enable resource sharing between servers, networks and storage in enterprise data centers, cloud computing, Web 2.0 and other environments. The consensus price target is $11.33. The stock closed Thursday at $9.76.

Once the selling starts, often opportunistic hedge funds smell and sense the weakness. They come in behind the shareholder selling and short the stocks hard. They often will press the short day after day until something starts to give and the stock rebounds. With stocks that are way oversold, a strong trading bounce to the upside can often give nimble traders a handsome profit. That said, this is very aggressive, and not for conservative portfolios.

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