Apple, Cisco Send Tech Stocks Soaring

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) and Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) sent tech stocks soaring on Tuesday, as the Nasdaq recovered all of Monday’s losses and then some.

Cisco rose 4.5% after Goldman Sachs upgraded the company on optimism about the networking giant’s move into the server market. Jitters about Cisco’s move sent the Nasdaq lower by 1.9% on Monday; the index rebounded 4.1% today.

Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) gained 4.4% after unveiling the latest version of its iPhone software.

Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) was another winner, rising nearly 5% on new laptops.

Chip stocks continued to rally on hopes for a recovery, with AMD (NYSE: AMD), Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) and Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN) among the gainers.

Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) was up 3.4% a day ahead of its earnings report. Analysts are looking for Oracle to report a 1.6% increase in quarterly sales to $5.46 billion and earnings of 32 cents a share, according to Thomson Reuters.

The e-commerce sector was another strong one, with Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO), eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) up 5% or more each.

Sun (NASDAQ: JAVA), Research in Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM), Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), Marvell (NASDAQ: MRVL), Symantec (NASDAQ: SYMC), ON Semi (NASDAQ: ONNN), Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA), Broadcom (NASDAQ: BRCM) and Juniper (NASDAQ: JNPR) all rose 5% or more.

An unexpected pickup in housing starts also helped boost the broader stock market.

After the close, Adobe (NASDAQ: ADBE) edged higher after beating estimates.

The Nasdaq rose 58 to 1462, the S&P 500 gained 24 to 778, and the Dow surged 178 to 7395. Volume declined to 7.06 billion shares on the NYSE, and 2.13 billion on the Nasdaq. Advancers led by a 28-9 margin on the NYSE, and 21-6 on the Nasdaq. Upside volume was 90% on the NYSE, and 92% on the Nasdaq. New highs-new lows were 9-65 on the NYSE, and 4-56 on the Nasdaq.