New Delhi, July 15 -- This earnings season, more than any other, will sort the winners from the losers-but it's going to be a volatile process.

Two sentences in a shareholder letter from IBM's CEO caused mayhem in the tech sector Tuesday.

Clients are shifting capex spending toward servers, storage, and memory ahead of expected price increases, Arvind Krishna wrote Tuesday, alongside preliminary results. They were also "distracted" by rapidly evolving cybersecurity concerns in the quarter.

Investors didn't think twice. The U.S. market's shiny, new memory-chip maker SK Hynix jumped 27%; server maker Dell climbed 7%; and storage play Sandisk rose 5%. Cybersecurity stocks also surged. In contrast, IBM slumped 25% on its worst ever day and ...