Software Stocks Update: 2/05

The Software Stock Index was off 1.7% this month compared to the NASDAQ's 0.5% loss.  The average stock was acutally up 0.3% thanks to a strong performance by small caps.  This month's worst performning sectors were Supply Chain (-9.4%), E-Learning (-8.1%), and Wireless (-7.3%).  The best performing sectors were Collaboration (+9.0%), Business Intelligence (+6.3%) and PC Software (+5.7%).  PC Software is actually up 37.3% year over year so all those sub-$500 PCs are indeed driving growth.  Q1 is usually a tough quarter for software stocks and with 2 losing months in a row, Q1 2005 looks like it will no exception.

For detailed statistics on the software sector, click here to download a spreadsheet with all the data and click here to get Microsoft's automatic stock quote downloading plug-in for Excel if you don't already have it.