Ringing Up The Dow

AT&T is buoying blue chips following an unsolicited bid by Comcast to buy its AT&T broadband unit for $44.5 billion in stock and an assumption of nearly one third of that amount in debt. AT&T would keep its telecommunications business, valued at $70 billion.

AT&T
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is the biggest winner on the Dow, up 11%, or 1.90 at 18.60.

The Dow is up 6 at 10,257, the Nasdaq Composite is up 16.09 at 2020.25, and the S&P 500 is up 4.22 at 1194.81.

But without AT&T’s gain on the session, the Dow would be underwater — down for a fourth session. Boeing
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is the biggest drag on the Dow, down 2.80%, after failing to log as many orders for aircraft as in the same period last year.

Stocks are also higher after a brutal selloff last week, weakly rectifying an oversold condition. The Nasdaq was also down for four out of five sessions last week and was particularly hard hit after EMC
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and Applied Micro Devices
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warned profits would come in substantially below views. The quarterly pre-announcement period is winding to a close. Next week, 1,200 companies announce actual earnings results.

Motorola
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and Yahoo
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will kick off the earnings season when they announce results on Wednesday.

Qualcomm
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is one of the biggest gainers among big-cap tech stocks, sporting a 3.82 gain to 62.00 after saying it would develop wireless technology products with a South Korean concern.

In the sectors, Net stocks
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+2.32%, networking
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+1.35%, and drugs
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+1.32% are leading. Oil services
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—3.45% and securities broker dealers
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are the weakest areas of Monday’s market.

In a sign of further washout in the Internet sector, Webvan, an Internet-based grocery delivery operation, said it would file for bankruptcy protection and lay off 2000 employees.

The first stage of Super SOES (small order execution of fewer than 99,999 shares) began in a handful of stocks. This early stage of implementation is a precursor to a faster, more efficient system of stocks order entry and execution for the Nasdaq.