Bothered by Big Blue

Yet the stock has fallen about 3% on those numbers. Why? I believe those sellers are on the forward edge of a trend that could quench the desire for a lot of other companies in the months to come.

IBM's revenue grew a mere 1% in its "Americas" division in the quarter, which is a nice way of saying it shrank in its core market of the U.S.

It was up in all the other regions: 13% in Europe and some "double-digit" growth in Asia. Well, either way it beats the hell out of 1% in the Americas, where most of the business is.

On the conference call last week, analysts were naturally focused on the less-than-spectacular growth (if not actual shrinkage) in the U.S. markets. Here's how IBM Chief Financial Officer Mark Loughridge responded to those concerns: "If you look at the U.S., however, we did see weakness, predominantly at the end of the quarter, in our enterprise space."

That's a Wall Street way of saying: Gentlemen, start your sell orders!

Weakness at the start of the quarter -- well, it's anyone's guess. Weakness at the end of the period -- when, if anything, companies should be rushing to fill all the allocated orders because they might need to order even more in the current quarter -- that's a different matter.