Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) and AMD (NYSE: AMD) rose on upgrades Monday, but the rest of the stock market ended the day well off its highs.
Dell gained 2 percent on a Broadpoint AmTech upgrade ahead of its earnings report, which will come after the market close on Thursday. Analyst Dinesh Moorjani upgraded Dell from “neutral” to “buy” based on improving PC demand.
Analysts are looking for earnings of 23 cents a share from Dell on a 23.5 percent decline in sales to $12.57 billion, according to Thomson reuters.
AMD jumped 8.7 percent on a Citigroup “buy” rating on an improving outlook and a stronger relationship with HP (NYSE: HPQ).
Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD), Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) and Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) were other gainers on a day that the Nasdaq turned a 0.8 percent gain into a 0.1 percent loss by the close.
Palm (NASDAQ: PALM) and Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) were two of the tech sector’s weaker names, off about 3 percent each.
Nokia’s (NYSE: NOK) move into the Netbook market and reports of strong early demand for Apple’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) Mac OS X 10.6, codenamed “Snow Leopard”, did little for those stocks, as both ended the day flat.
The Nasdaq slipped 3 to 2017, the S&P 500 lost half a point to 1025, and the Dow added 3 to 9509. Volume rose to 6.03 billion shares on the NYSE, but declined to 2.05 billion on the Nasdaq. Advancers led by a few shares on the NYSE, while decliners held a 15-12 edge on the Nasdaq. Upside volume was 55 percent on the NYSE, and 48 percent on the Nasdaq. New highs-new lows were 148-77 on the NYSE, and 76-9 on the Nasdaq.