Some of the recent gloom that had gathered around the shares of Sun Microsystems cleared at least briefly on Tuesday after the computer maker rushed out preliminary fourth-quarter figures that showed its sales had held up better than Wall Street’s most pessimistic expectations.

Sun’s shares had slumped to a new post-bubble low at the end of last week as investors grew concerned that the worsening economic outlook, and turmoil in the financial services industry where Sun makes many of its sales, would further hold back any recovery at the troubled maker of servers and storage equipment.