Tech Stocks: Good Start For New Quarter

Fueled by upbeat reports on inflation, jobless claims, and the manufacturing sector, the markets began the second quarter on a positive note Thursday, with all of our indexes reporting gains.

Our InformationWeek 100 index rose 4.71 points, or 1.4%, to close at 332.23, while the Nasdaq increased 20.78, or more than 1%, to 2,015.00. The Dow rose 15.63 points, or 0.2%, to close at 10,373.33. The S&P 500 rose 5.96, or 0.5%, to finish the day at 1,132.17. The Nasdaq-100 tracking stock closed at $36.02, up 18 cents or 0.5%, on moderately light trading volume of less than 83 million shares.

Among Thursday's winners were Verizon Communications, Pfizer, and American International Group, which are replacing AT&T, Eastman Kodak, and International Paper among the Dow industrials.

Economic news included an increase in the Institute for Supply Management's manufacturing index to 62.5 in March from 61.4 in February: Economists had been expecting a decline to 59.5. New unemployment claims last week were 342,000, down from 345,000 the previous week, according to the Labor Department, which also said its producer price index rose 0.1% in February, less than the expected 0.4% increase.

See the full listing of all the companies in the InformationWeek 100 and the top 5 percentage winners and losers for the last closing at http://www.informationweek.com/stocks.