Rally Undone By Manufacturing Slump

News that the manufacturing sector remains weak undercut a strong stock market rally on Monday.

The Nasdaq rose 6 to 1484, the S&P 500 slipped 1 to 934, and the Dow lost 33 to 8862 after trading above 9000 on the open. Volume rose from Wednesday’s levels to 1.56 billion shares on the NYSE, and 1.91 billion on the Nasdaq. Advancers led 18 to 14 on the NYSE, and 17 to 16 on the Nasdaq. Upside volume was 55% on the NYSE, and 55% on the Nasdaq. New highs-new lows were 59-16 on the NYSE, and 114-26 on the Nasdaq.

After the close, Texas Instruments and Citrix Systems both raised guidance.

During the day, the market bolted out of the gate on news of much stronger than expected retail sales, including online sales. Amazon.com and Overstock.com posted gains on the day.

Techs were helped by a poll of CIOs predicting an increase in IT spending next year.

Microsoft was unchanged on news that Massachusetts will keep fighting the company on antitrust issues, and West Virginia said after the close that it too will keep fighting.

Adobe fell 2.6% as it tried to counter Microsoft’s efforts in the enterprise publishing space.

HP , up 1.8%, debuted new data center servers.

IBM , up 0.4%, unveiled software for mobile on-demand computing. Also, Big Blue’s $2 billion sale of its hard drive assets to Hitachi was approved by the FTC.

Intersil surged 11% on an upgrade. The company is one of only two pure-play WiFi stocks.

Nokia gained 5% on a Merrill Lynch upgrade.

Intel was stopped at its 200-day moving average just above 22. Lehman upgrade Intel and AMD, but Bernstein was cautious on the sector.

Genuity surged 29% on news that it is selling its assets to Level 3 .

Overture slipped fractionally despite making some progress with British ISP Freeserve.

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