Hanging on to Gains, and Looking

Tech stocks stayed on the upside of middling after a pretty big pop in stocks yesterday on not a lot of economic data.

Traders appeared to maintain a bit of caution, even with tech stocks still getting some play following yesterday’s rally, and with oil prices slipping downward following the end of the soldier standoff after Iran planned to release British soldiers it was holding in captivity.

The Nasdaq index rose by 0.34 percent to close at 2,458.69. The Dow closed up by 0.16 percent to finish the day at 12,530.05 and the S&P 500 finished up at 1,439.37, a gain of 0.11 percent.

Microsoft closed the regular trading day at $29.50, up 2.26 percent on the regular trading day and ticking upward in after hours as well. Another mover and shaker in the tech sector, Cisco , pick up about a percentage to close at $26.10 today.

Monster Worldwide  fell by 13 percent to 42.10 after the staffing and job listing site warned of lower first quarter sales than analysts had expected.

With first quarter earnings season just about to kick off, investors were also looking for any signs of faltering corporate profits as a better judge of the long-term outlook for the economy.

Paul Shread and technical analysis are on vacation this week.