Bolling: Big Blue Moving, Grooving

At the end of the trading day, I usually spend a few minutes paging through stock and commodity charts. Occasionally, something jumps out at me. Yesterday I was scanning the usual suspects: Goldman(GS), Chevron(CVX), Apple (AAPL), Research In Motion (RIMM), steel, Chesapeake Energy(CHK), oil, gold, dollar, corn, International Business Machines(IBM), Morgan Stanley (MS), Norfolk Southern(NSC) ... wait a minute, go back ... IBM.

I know the green flags were waving all day in tech of all forms -- consumer tech, big-cap tech, semis and Internet infrastructure. Techs started strong and stayed strong all day. IBM is one of the little talked-about tech stocks lately that have been doing quite well. It is up about 19% year to date and has held up in the face of some really choppy markets recently.

We all know IBM as the $174 billion software giant. IBM's financials are rock-solid and the world has come to know and respect the IBM name as an ultra-high quality global IT-solutions provider. Let's leave the fundamentals aside for the moment, the IBM stock chart has formed an interesting pattern.

IBM jumped over $120 for the first time in five years on Oct. 11, 2007... and then failed to hold. Within days, IBM selling pressured the stock, and it took a beating along with the rest of the tech sector, losing 18% by early January. This is important because over the course of the year IBM has recovered and, on April 16 and April 17, it made another attempt at $120. This time it pushed through, rising as high as $130.