The analysts also mentioned that  it “stands out very uniquely” in technology, given its “strong presence across all layers of the cloud stack including applications platforms and infrastructure.” 

They think  that Microsoft is well positioned to double its $60 billion-plus commercial cloud business (Azure, Office 365, Dynamics, and LinkedIn Commercial) into a $120 billion to $140 billion business in the longer term.Microsoft’s installed base of on-premise Windows servers alone represents $80 billion to $90 billion in potential Azure business, according to the analysts’ thesis.

The rallies off the March lows and then after the little hiccups we saw in September and October have put the four main U.S. indices in overbought territory based on the weekly RSI and weekly stochastic indicators.Stocks that don’t have the best fundamentals, but have gone up with the overall market and have elevated overbought/oversold indicators.

Something that stood out in my search was a trio of software stocks with poor fundamental indicators and high readings on their weekly OB/OS indicators.

I ran a scan of S&P 500 stocks on January 6, and 320 members of the index have weekly stochastics readings above 70.The rally in the overall market over the last few months has created the current situation.

Each month I build a list of stocks that meet certain fundamental requirements and then I keep an eye on the weekly charts, trying to find a good entry point to buy the stocks that I am interested in.

Digital payments company Square Inc., has reportedly held talks to acquire the music-streaming platform Tidal, as it tries to diversify its business.

Citing an source familiar with the matter (and not willing to be named) , Bloomberg reported that Jack Dorsey, who runs Square, has discussed a potential deal with rapper Jay-Z who bought Tidal for $56 million in early 2015. Talks are still private and do not necessarily imply a deal, according to the report.

Tidal has had a challenge keeping up with peers  including Spotify Technology SA and Apple Music.

Morgan Stanley analyst Keith Weiss’ top pick for next year is  Microsoft .He also boosted his price target on the stock to $260 from $249.

“With tough near-term comparisons already in consensus estimates, and the multiple having pulled back to 26 times [estimated] 2022 calendar year EPS, we see potential for outperformance in fiscal year 2021 [ending June 30],” Weiss wrote in a commentary.  He thinks that the durability of growth and margin expansion are underappreciated.

According to Weiss, a combination of market factors like sector rotation out of software, as well as Microsoft-specific factors have been weighing on the stock.

In our opinion, technical factors tend to have a greater influence over the short term while fundamentals are more important over the long run. Sometimes we see stocks with good fundamentals that enter a downward trend and have a hard time breaking out of it.NetApp peaked up near $82 back in September ’18—the prices on the chart below are adjusted for dividend payments.

Zscaler ‘s fiscal first quarter earnings surpassed expectations.Analyst polled by FactSet is forecasting earnings of 7 cents a share and revenue of $140.2 million. Looking further ahead, the company is projecting earnings of 37 cents to 38 cents a share for fiscal 2021.

Five9  reported earnings that beat analysts’ estimates. The cloud company’s quarterly earnings were $0.27 per share, compared to analyst expectations of $0.18 a share. Revenue surged +34% year-over-year to a record of $112.1 million. CEO Rowan Trollope told about its acquisition of Inference in a press release, “We believe adding Inference to the Five9 portfolio accelerates our leadership position in AI while also providing customers with a market-leading IVA at a time when customers need efficient real-time assistance,” while adding “Customer engagement is now more paramount than ever.We are excited to build upon our successful partnership with this acquisition.”  

Microsoft  got a price target hike from Stifel analysts. The analysts raised their price target on the technology behemoth’s shares  to $245 from $220.They also affirmed a buy rating.   The analysts cited their expectations that Microsoft should benefit from faster digital transformation due to the coronavirus pandemic as well as a recuperating world economy.

Financial services/mobile payment company Square   said that it bought about 4,709 bitcoins for $50 million. Cryptocurrency Bitcoin has surged +49% in price  so far this year. Square believes that cryptocurrency is an instrument of “economic empowerment” and that is offers a way for the world to participate in a global monetary system, which aligns with the company’s purpose. The investment in Bitcoin represents around 1% of Square’s total assets as of the end of second-quarter 2020. Square launched bitcoin trading in 2018 for its Cash App customers. The company recently launched the Cryptocurrency Open Patent Alliance, a nonprofit organization focused on crypto innovation. Tickeron's AI-powered scorecard rates SQ a "STRONG BUY". According to Tickeron, SQ's MACD Histogram crosses above signal line The Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) for SQ turned positive on September 25, 2020.

Oracle reported fiscal first quarter earnings that beat analysts; expectations. The software/cloud giant’s  adjusted earnings came in at 93 cents a share, compared to the 86 cents a share estimated by analysts polled by Refinitiv. Revenue increased +2% year-over-year to  $9.37 billion, surpassing the $9.19 billion expected by analysts. Q1 revenue from cloud services and license support grew +2%. The company’s Fusion Cloud ERP Suite grew +33% year-over-year.In 31 of 46 similar past instances, the stock price increased further within the following month.

Square Inc.  posted second quarter earnings that beat analysts’ expectations. The digital payments company’s earnings released one day ahead of schedule on what it called "early external access of the company’s quarterly financials' to the group's financials". The Jack Dorsey-led company’s gross profit surged +28% year-over-year to $597 million.Its revenues climbed +64% to $1.92 billion, beating estimates. A substantial part in the results can be attributed to the government’s Paycheck Protection program (PPP) stimulus measure against covid-19 economic impact.

Microsoft Corp.   shares fell Tuesday, after  potential suitors surfaced with respect to the planned sale of TikTok's U.S. operations over the coming weeks. News broke Friday that U.S. President Donald Trump ordered that Chinese app Tiktok should divest its U.S. operations amid concerns over data privacy linked to its China-based owners, ByteDance, following an investigation by Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. On Sunday, Microsoft said that it's looking at buying TikTok's U.S. business. Tiktok has been downloaded over 175 million times in the U.S. alone and has 1 billion global users.Tickeron's analysis proposes that the odds of a continued Uptrend are 67%. Following a 3-day Advance, the price is estimated to grow further.

Microsoft's   business messaging app Microsoft Teams is partnering with soft drink behemoth Coca-Cola . The  five-year partnership with Coca-Cola   gives the latter access to a suite of Microsoft products such as Azure, Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365. Since mid-March, the total number of minutes spent in Teams meetings increased by +200% to 2.7 billion.According to the company, total video calls surged +1,000% in March, with overall usage on mobile also growing in countries hardest-hit by the covid-19 pandemic.

Microsoft has indicated that its sales would fall short of guidance as a result of the Coronavirus crisis.  On Wednesday, the tech behemoth said that it will miss its previous sales guidance of between $10.75 billion and $11.15 billion for its "more personal computing" business, which includes Windows OEM and Surface. While the company thinks demand for Windows is in line with their expectations, the supply chain is taking more time than anticipated in returning to normal operations.  That’s why,  for the third quarter of fiscal year 2020 the company does not expect to meet their More Personal Computing segment guidance, since Windows OEM and Surface  are more adversely affected  than previously expected.

  The online storage/file hosting platform’s GAAP net loss came in at -2 cents a share for the latest quarter, compared to the loss of -3 cents a share that analysts polled by FactSet had estimated.The loss was same as the year-ago quarter. Dropbox’s revenue climbed +19% year-over-year to $446 million in the quarter, beating analysts’ expectation of $443.3 million. There were 14.3 million paying users for Dropbox at the end of the fourth quarter, up +13% from a year earlier. Average revenue per paying user grew +4.5% to $125. The board authorized share buyback of upto $600 million.

Microsoft  reported fiscal second-quarter results that surpassed analyst expectations. The tech behemoth’s earnings for the quarter came in at $1.51 per share, compared to analysts’ estimate of  $1.32. Revenue increased +14% year-over-year to $36.9 billion, also exceeding analysts’ forecast of $36.67 billion. Microsoft’s personal computing segment raked in $13.2 billion in revenue in the quarter. In late October, Microsoft won the 10-year $10 billion contract – Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure - from the Pentagon .It did so after beating cloud competitor Amazon Web Services.  

Tech behemoth Microsoft Corp. got a $195 price target from analysts at Wedbush.  Wedbush analyst Dan Ives and his team boosted price target on Microsoft shares to $195 from $185.

Square got a rating boost from Bank of America (BofA) this week. Bank of America analyst Jason Kupferberg boosted his rating on the mobile-payments company to buy from neutral.  Kupferberg thinks that Square shares now have attractive prices for investors seeking to add the stock to their portfolios or bulk up their current holdings (as reported in Bloomberg). The BofA analyst also suggested that Square's revenue guidance for 2020 looks "conservative" .

On Monday, tech giant Microsoft announced that it won a court order that allowed the company to take control of 50 websites that a North Korea-linked hacking group was using to make cyber-attacks. The hacker group called “Thallium,” believed to be operating from North Korea, was using spear phishing technique to gather  information about individuals through the public domain and social media.As a result, hackers got access to the users’ emails, contact lists and calendar appointments (according to Microsoft). Individuals targeted by Thallium included think tanks, university staff, government employees,  and those working on nuclear proliferation issues.