Palm Leads Rally Ahead of Cisco’s Results

Palm (NASDAQ: PALM) led tech stocks higher on Tuesday, a day ahead of Cisco’s (NASDAQ: CSCO) quarterly earnings report.

Palm rose 7 percent on upbeat comments from Deutsche Bank — which also said the smartphone maker could become a takeover target. Research in Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) gained 2.5 percent, while Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) gained 0.6 percent.

Cisco tacked on a little more than 1 percent ahead of its results. Analysts expect the networking giant to report a 3.5 percent increase in sales to $9.4 billion — the company’s first sales growth in more than a year — and earnings of 35 cents a share, according to Thomson Reuters.

AMD (NYSE: AMD) slipped 0.9 percent on a Goldman Sachs “sell” rating on the expectation of continuing losses.

Rudolph Technologies (NASDAQ: RTEC) and Emulex (NYSE: ELX) were among the earnings gainers.

Comsys IT (NASDAQ: CITP) soared 31 percent on news that it will be acquired by Manpower (NYSE: MAN).

The Nasdaq rose 18 to 2190, the S&P 500 climbed 14 to 1103, and the Dow gained 111 to 10,296. Volume rose to 4.75 billion shares on the NYSE, and 2.51 billion on the Nasdaq. Advancers led by a 29-8 margin on the NYSE, and 15-11 on the Nasdaq. Upside volume was 83 percent on the NYSE, and 72 percent on the Nasdaq. New highs-new lows were 107-37 on the NYSE, and 50-20 on the Nasdaq.