Wondering which sector is performing the best during the current economic crunch? The kind folks at MarketWatch provided the answer: technology. Nick Godt notes that the sector has gained strength from "investors playing an uncertain environment as both a defensive and a cyclical sector." For the month, tech is only 1.4% lower - winning it the coveted title of the best of the worst for February. The article adds that tech was followed closely by healthcare, "the most traditional defensive sector," with a loss of 1.6%.

Shares of one-time tech stalwart, Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) soared more than 20% yesterday after the computer server and software company posted better-than-expected results for its second fiscal quarter of 2009, which ended Dec. 28, 2008.

Sun said it lost $208 million, or 28 cents per share, in the quarter, but absent one-time items it would have earned $114 million, or 15 cents per share. Revenue was $3.22 billion. Analysts surveyed by FactSet Research expected the company to lose 13 cents per share on revenue of $3.11 billion.

International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) isn't on Wall Street's good graces these days. Big Blue posted decent fourth-quarter results yesterday but Wall Street expected better than the 11 percent profit growth and 7.5 percent jump in revenue.

Think Equity analyst Eric Ross told clients that IBM's results were helped by a lower-than-expected tax rate and that investors were expecting the technology giant to "handily beat consensus estimates," according to Reuters. Shares fell 4 percent.

Hardware was an area of concern to investors. Revenue from IBM's Systems and Technology group, which includes servers, storage and its Microelectronics business, rose 3 percent to $7.1 billion.

Since companies can now upgrade their systems with software, they have less need for expensive hardware. That's causing sales of large computers to slow, which is a negative trend for the company, IBM shareholder Pat Becker of Becker Capital Management told Bloomberg News.

As Eric Buscemi points out, investors also are worried about IBM's services business, which had long-term bookings that were disappointing.

IBM has been tops in patent awards for years.. Now, would be a good time to lock some of those geeks in a room to inspire them to come up with the next big thing.

Until then, Wall Street will be keeping its distance from IBM.