Mixed Opening

Stocks appeared set to open mixed
Friday.

Agilent Technologies
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was
downgraded by Morgan Stanley to Outperform from Strong Buy.

Morgan Stanley upgraded Powerwave
Technologies
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was upgraded to Outperform from Neutral. Morgan Stanley
sees a fair value of PWAV of $17 a share.

Robertson Stephens downgrades Plexus
Corp
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from Buy to Market Perform.

Juniper Networks
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was
upgraded to Outperform from Neutral by Salomon Smith Barney.

Orchid Biosciences
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the
maker of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) which is aligned with Luminex
(
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, has the technology which could be used to potentially detect
organisms that could be used in a bio terrorism attack. ORCH was written about
in Business Week as a potentially undetected bio-terrorism play.

Compaq Computer
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was awarded
a contract with the U.S. Postal Service to provide standard Windows- and Intel-based IT solutions. The
five-year single-source contract is worth
approximately $1 billion.

Providian Financial
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lowered
its outlook for Q3 to come in between 19-21 cents a share, from 82-84 cents a
share.

In a report by Business Week, a money
manager thinks that Griffon
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, the maker of building products and
specialty plastic films, has a value of $20/share. The reason is GFF has a unit
which makes communications and radar systems for the SH60R helicopter and the
U.S Air Force C-17 cargo plane, used to drop humanitarian supplies in Afghanistan.