A sheenless session
Some late-day
jitters tied to the need to preserve some of those lush year-to-date
gains took some of the sheen off what had been a decent session Tuesday.
Naturally, no one was really complaining. The Dow helped itself to another 85
points, while the Comp forfeited a measly 3.27 points.
Nasdaq volume rose 5% yet remained the
second-lightest since the day after Thanksgiving.
The B2Bs
were where the action was, with Commerce [CMRC>CMRC] sharing
most of the headlines with Elcom [ELCO>ELCO]. CMRC, however, after bolting
29%, went out on its low as volume swelled 19% above that of Monday.
Distribution doesn’t usually get much more blatant than that…As for ELCO, the
stock pole-vaulted 78%, or 16, to 36 1/2. The problem is that it stretched as
high as 90 intraday. Distribution, again. Volume, at 29.4 million, eclipsed the
company’s total shares out of 28 million…Other B2Bs, like EPiphany
[EPNY>EPNY], Chemdex [CMDX>CMDX], and Retek [RETK>RETK] also closed
near or at their lows.
It’s tough to be anything but a bull on
the benchmark techs. They simply don’t want to
come in. A look at Tuesday’s action in Dell [DELL>DELL], Oracle
[ORCL>ORCL], EMC [EMC>EMC], Ericsson [ERICY>ERICY], Hewlett
[HWP>HWP], Microsoft [MSFT>MSFT], Motorola [MOT>MOT], and Sun
[SUNW>SUNW] bears this out…Dell, seeing its turnover dry up for the second
day, is doing everything it should be doing before another attempt
higher…
In color=#008000>cyberspace, DoubleClick [DCLK>DCLK] and CMGI
[CMGI>CMGI] remain two of the rare standouts among well-established Net
issues…most of the others, like AOL [AOL>AOL], Amazon [AMZN>AMZN], and
eBay [EBAY>EBAY], leave much to be desired.
The color=#008000>genomics had an off-day, but most names pulled back
on lighter volume, a plus…Gene Logic [GLGC>GLGC] was a rare name that came
under distribution…Incyte [INCY>INCY] was another.
The Street consensus calls for the
market to head higher in January.
Interestingly, the tape says the same
thing.
At press time, Kevin N. Marder held a
long position in AOL.