Market Wrap-Up: Tech Stocks Rebound

Technology stocks recovered about one-third of the ground they lost in yesterday's major sell-off, but blue chips remained unchanged as investors waited to hear Thursday's testimony from Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

Greenspan is scheduled to deliver his semiannual Humphrey-Hawkins testimony on monetary policy before the House Banking Committee on Thursday. The testimony can have a dramatic effect on stock and bond prices.

The Dow Jones industrial average advanced 6.65 points, or 0.1%, to 11,002.78. The Nasdaq Composite rose 29.56 points, or 1.1%, to 2,761.74. Tuesday's 3.5% plunge in the Nasdaq was its worst in more than three months.

The day's star performer among technology stocks was music distributor MP3.com (MPPP), which closed at 63-5/16 on its first day of trading. The company raised about $344 million by selling 12.3 million shares at $28 each in its initial public offering.

Computer hardware stocks were higher, except for Gateway (GTW), which declined 1-5/8 to 65-3/4. Apple Computer (AAPL) rose 1-3/16 after it unveiled its iBook laptop, which comes in blueberry and tangerine colors and has a retail price of $1,600. Some analysts had expected the iBook to come out at a lower price.

Among other hardware stocks, IBM (IBM) was up 3/4 at 129, Hewlett-Packard (HWP) advanced 1-15/16 to 112-9/16, Compaq (CPQ) added 3/8 to 26, and Dell Computer (DELL) rose 1/8 to 41-1/4.

Data storage company EMC (EMC) rose 3-1/4 to 63-5/16 after reporting second-quarter net income that was a record for the company and that exceeded analysts' estimates. EMC's revenue for the second quarter was a record $1.29 billion, 36% higher than the second quarter of 1998. Net income for the quarter was a record $289 million, up 52% compared with the second quarter of 1998.

Enterprise resource planning vendors' stocks were mixed, with Oracle (ORCL) up 5/8 to 38-1/8, SAP (SAP) up 1/2 to 33-15/16, PeopleSoft (PSFT) down 1/2 to 14, and J.D. Edwards (JDEC) down 5/8 to 16-3/8. Among supply-chain vendors, Manugistics (MANU) was down 7/32 to 14-1/8, while i2 Technologies (ITWO) was up 1-15/32 to 42-15/32.

Networking stocks were mostly flat. Cisco Systems (CSCO) rose 13/16 to 63-1/16, while Lucent Technologies (LU) added 3/16 to 70-1/8.

Internet stocks regained some of the ground they lost yesterday, with Yahoo (YHOO) jumping 9-3/4 to 151-7/8, and eBay (EBAY) rising 2-3/8 to 115-5/16.