IBM shares fall along with rest of Wall Street

Shares of IBM Corp. declined along with the broader markets Monday, falling to their lowest point in more than a year.

IBM's shares fell $2.82, or 2.7 percent, to $100.62, bottoming at $96.60, their lowest level since March of last year, earlier in the session. The stock previously hit a 52-week low of $97.04 on Jan. 11, before the company's annual earnings report. But after IBM preannounced quarterly profit from continuing operations above Wall Street's estimates, the stock jumped above $101 just a few days later.

Shares of IBM, which are part of the Dow Jones industrial average, are down about 7 percent since the start of the year. By comparison, the DJIA is down about 25 percent, closing below 10,000 on Monday for the first time in four years as credit markets failed to thaw despite global bailout efforts.

Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM is broadly considered to be among the best bets in the tech sector in a turbulent economy. Nonetheless, BMO Capital Markets analyst Keith Bachman said Monday that with the company's heavily backend-loaded quarter occurring at the same time as the financial market crisis, he doesn't think "the quarter closed as well as was hoped, for IBM or any of our covered companies."

Still, the analyst reiterated an "Outperform" rating on the industry bellwether.