Maybe the weather is windy
And maybe the weather is hot
We'll weather the weather -- whatever the weather --
Whether we like it or not!
-- Nursery rhymes are poetry, too!
Maybe we've actually reached the market bottom now. We have enough people calling the bottom that they might just make it happen through sheer force of will: Keanu Reeves and Ben Bernanke were early voices in the desert, joined later by Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) and a gaggle of semiconductor designers.
The latest addition to the optimistic choir is EMC (NYSE:EMC) CEO Joe Tucci. While reporting sales that slipped 9.2% year-over-year to $3.15 billion and an earnings slide from $0.12 per share a year ago to $0.10 this quarter, Tucci talked himself warm over a market recovery.
"As we look to the balance of 2009, we believe the global IT spending environment has reached or is very near the bottom," Tucci said. The second half of the year will see renewed IT investments thanks to stimulus packages, better budget visibility, and everyone getting further along in their restructuring programs, he argued.
If Tucci is correct in his assumptions -- and you almost have to think that his position in a company like EMC, with thousands of clients large and small, would give him a leg to stand on -- that's obviously great news for his own IT infrastructure company. It's also good for other data-center denizens such as Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), and International Business Machines (NYSE:IBM).
Now, not everyone agrees that we've hit rock bottom yet. Within the Fool itself, Nick Kapur was unconvinced as late as last month, and eternal curmudgeon Seth Jayson keeps telling us to stay cool. In my opinion, this may or may not be the actual bottom -- but we're far enough below the frothy valuations of 2007 that any solid investment you make today is likely to bear long-term fruit. And yes, I'd include the solidly profitable and cash-rich EMC in that category -- whether its CEO is spot-on correct or not.
