Staying with industrial stocks, analyst Colin Gibson at HSBC anticipates further profit taking in the coming weeks.

“I think we might see a bit more profit taking over the next few weeks”. “It’s quite possible that some investors might want to go short ahead of second quarter numbers,” he tells the Swedish Wire, adding however that he believes this to be a “risky strategy”.

“What you’re really betting on is that second quarter will be weak which is absolutely true they will be just as weak as first quarter earnings but in the first quarter the stocks didn’t fall because investors aren’t really focused on earnings but on orders and cash flow. And orders weren’t as bad as expected in Q1 and cash flow was probably a little better than expected. So what we’re likely to see is very, very bad earnings, fairly bad orders and fairly good cash flow,” the analyst says.

Second quarter numbers are due from Atlas Copco and Sandvik on July 17, while ABB will release earnings on July 23, 2009.