Revenue at IBM (NYSE:IBM) fell just barely in Q3 2016, perhaps something of an achievement for beleaguered Big Blue. The company has seen its revenue shrink for an astonishing 18 quarters in a row. During that time, IBM has been written off as no longer important, where once a bellwether for the industry and even the whole global economy now supposedly a laggard in a world onrushing toward the cloud. As we have seen with online shopping, however, I believe that IBM isn't directly a victim of structural changes but rather the global depression that is accelerating them.
But whereas Nonstore Retail Sales have surged only this year, IBM's core business has been undercut by new technology adoption for these past almost five years. In the middle of 2011, amidst 12% revenue growth, management believed that it was the same economy as before the Great "Recession", with Big Blue positioned right at the front of recovery with all its traditional hardware offerings. Not coincidentally, in my view, that all changed right at that time where the eurodollar system became widely viewed (from the inside) as no longer able to perform that task (rebuilding as in pre-2007 condition).
