Careful Buying Drives Market Up

Selective buying enabled the stock market to extend its streak of record-setting performances Monday.

Most of the popular stock gauges finished modestly higher after trading near the break-even point for most of the day. The minor gains were enough to push several widely followed indicators past the highs established last week.

The Dow Jones industrial average edged beyond its record close reached Friday to post its third straight high. It rose 10.03 to 4,083.68.

Regardless of the gains, Wall Street analysts were unimpressed by the market’s performance and said weary investors were taking a break while reviewing last week’s barrage of economic news.

Bill Allyn, director of equity trading at Jefferies & Co., pointed to the tallies of advancing and declining stocks on the NYSE as evidence that the market was in a holding pattern.

Declining issues had a slight edge over advancers on the Big Board, with 1,068 stocks up, 1,107 down and 788 unchanged. Volume on the NYSE floor eased to 301.72 million shares as of 4 p.m. Eastern time.

Some of the stocks that moved substantially or traded heavily:

NYSE

Circus Circus, up 3 1/2 to 28 3/4.

The company plans to buy Gold Strike Resorts for 17 million shares and $12 million cash.

Philip Morris, up 2 7/8 to 66 5/8.

Tobacco stocks were boosted by news that an appellate court stripped class-action status from a drugindustry lawsuit that has parallels to one against the tobacco industry.

Micron Technology, up 3 7/8 to 73 3/4.

Stock of the maker of specialty semiconductors continued to rise in response to an upbeat quarterly financial report.

Regency Health Services, down 2 1/8 to 12 3/4.

The company disclosed that talks with an unidentified company concerning a possible business combination have been terminated.

NASDAQ

AutoFinance Group, up 5 3-16 to 15 3-16.

The automobile financing company will be acquired by KeyCorp in a deal valued at $319 million.

Madge Networks, up 4 1/2 to 21 1/8.

The company has entered into a marketing arrangement with Cisco Systems.

AMEX

Colonial Data Technologies, down 4 3/4 to 14 1/8.

Stock of the maker of calleridentification equipment fell after Texas Instruments disclosed plans for a competing system.