IBM Rallies 8% While Oracle, Cisco, HPE Drift: Is the Laggard Finally Bouncing?

Actions of International business machines (New York Stock Exchange: IBM | IBM price prediction) rose 8% in mid-morning trading Thursday, while three legacy enterprise technology peers don’t have the same rocket fuel today. Oracle (New York Stock Exchange:ORCL), cisco systems (NASDAQ:CSCO), and Hewlett Packard Company (New York Stock Exchange: HPE) are delivering mixed results and lagging IBM stock.

The setup is surprising because IBM stock has been a clear year-to-date laggard of this group, while CSCO and HPE stock have led the legacy IT cohort considerably higher. Today that script is flipped for one session, raising the question of whether the stragglers are finally starting to catch up.

The honest answer is multi-layered. A single day of relatively outperformance does little to erase a year of underperformance, although the gap that has opened up gives IBM stock real room to mean-revert.

Investment today vs. YTD

As of Wednesday’s close, IBM shares were down 23% so far this year…