Hewlett Packard’s stock price has dropped some 20% today in a dramatic reaction to the company’s earnings and spin-off proposals yesterday, approaching a six-year low and drawing into question the strategic calculation that went into the proposal to dump Palm, TouchPad, WebOS and consumer-side PCs. The last time HP’s stock price did so poorly was Black Monday 1987, where its share price declined by some 20.7%. Today’s stock performance makes it one of the worst performing stocks on the market today, and the future outlook is neutral, aka, sell it while it is worth something. I am quite skeptical of HP’s plan to spin-off its consumer PC business but it would make strategic sense if HP is looking to unload that portion of their business unto another manufacturer, likely of Chinese, Korean or Indian origin. While profit margins on the consumer side of PCs have been declining for years, IBM already has a healthy stake and established reputation among enterprise clients, making further headway into that market by HP costly and a risky proposition upon which to depend for one’s corporate future.