Check Point, Big Blue Lead Market Higher

Stocks rose on Thursday, buoyed by strong earnings from Check Point Software and IBM. But Net stocks were weak on an earnings warning from Vignette.

The ISDEX http://www.wsrn.com/apps/ISDEX/ slipped 3 to 404, but the Nasdaq climbed 48 to 2730. The S&P 500 added 14 to 1343, and the Dow rose 98 to 10,682, boosted by IBM's earnings. Volume declined to 574 million shares on the NYSE, and 1.1 billion on the Nasdaq. Advancers led by 14 to 13 on the NYSE, and 18 to 17 on the Nasdaq. Economic reports continued to show a significant slowdown in manufacturing. For earnings reports, visit our earnings calendar at http://www.wsrn.com/apps/earnings/internet.xpl and reported earnings at http://www.wsrn.com/apps/earnings/ireported.xpl. For after hours quotes and news, visit our after hours trading site at http://www.afterhourstrading.com.

Traders awaited a slew of earnings after the close from the likes of Microsoft , Sun Microsystems , eBay , Commerce One , Nortel and Inktomi .

Check Point soared 10 15/16 to 137 1/2 after beating estimates by 8 cents with 46-cent earnings and declaring a 3-for-2 stock split.

i2 Technologies beat estimates by a penny with 9-cent earnings, but the stock fell 3 15/16 to 49 15/16 on concern about competition from the likes of Oracle and comments that business could slow .

Travelocity.com surged 3 to 17 15/16 after beating estimates by 9 cents with a 5-cent loss. Expedia rose 2 to 13 3/4.

Vignette plunged 5 11/32 to 7 5/32 on an earnings warning. BroadVision fell 2 7/8 to 14 3/8, and Art Technology lost 5 1/2 to 19 1/2.

Other earnings warnings came from Scient , down 1/4 to 3 3/16, S1 , off 1 1/4 to 6 1/2, Entrust , down 1 5/8 to 15 3/4, and Jupiter Media Metrix , down 1 9/16 to 6 7/8.

Mercury Interactive surged 5 15/16 to 86 7/8 after beating estimates by 4 cents with 28-cent earnings. Marimba , up 17/32 to 7 21/32, beat estimates by 6 cents with a 1-cent loss.

Analysts dismissed yesterday's speculation that Yahoo could be a takeover target, but traders didn't appear to be listening sending the stock 2 9/16 higher to 32 13/16.

Openwave continued to rise on positive analyst comments, climbing 2 5/16 to 49 7/16, but off its intraday high of 53 1/4.

Networkers had a tough time despite positive earnings from Redback Networks , down 7 7/16 to 41 1/8, Extreme Networks , down 6 15/16 to 40 15/16, Avici , off 1 11/16 to 33 1/4, and Efficient Networks , off 5/8 to 13 13/16.

NBC Internet slipped 3/16 to 4 after announcing 30% layoffs.

Some technical comments on the market: Note: We are now including charts in the technical market commentary. If you can't get the charts via the e-mail newsletter version, try this link: http://www.afterhourstrading.com/column.html

The Nasdaq has had a perfect record since the Fed cut rates: the five up days since then have all come on rising volume, and the five down days since then have all come on declining volume. We couldn't ask for better price and volume action. However, the Nasdaq is threatening to break that string of perfection today, rising on 20% lower volume so far. Given the dojis (potential rev