Technology Shares Lead To A Modest Advance

Bellwether technology shares led a modest rally again on Monday as investors, still shaken by a sharp two-week downturn, mustered up more confidence to bargain-hunt.

A late spurt of profit taking halved the day’s gain for the Dow Jones industrial average, which rose just 29.84 to 6,555.91, underscoring the lack of conviction among investors.

Broader stock measures also advanced for the second straight session as bond-market interest rates backed away from Friday’s seven-month high. Big-name technology shares led the way again, boosting the beleaguered Nasdaq market for the third straight session.

But even with a successful encore to Friday’s performance, few analysts were convinced that the stock market’s near-term troubles have ended.

Many are looking for a drop of at least 10 percent by popular market indicators such as the Dow and the Standard & Poor’s 500. At last week’s lows, both of those measures had fallen about 8 percent.

Some of the stocks that moved substantially or traded heavily Monday:

NYSE

Bankers Trust New York, down 2-3/4 at 79-1/2.

Alex. Brown & Sons, up 10 at 63-1/8.

Lehman Brothers, up 3 at 33-1/2.

Piper Jaffrey, up 2 at 16-3/4.

Raymond James Financial, up 2-5/8 at 23-3/8.

Hambrecht & Quist, up 3 at 20-7/8.

Legg Mason, up 4 at 49.

Everen Capital, up 2-1/8 at 23-3/4.

Morgan Keegan, up 2-1/8 at 19.

Bankers Trust agreed to buy Alex. Brown, the nation’s oldest stock brokerage, for stock valued at $1.7 billion, or about $66.40 a share. Bankers Trust will exchange 0.83 of a share of its stock for each share of Baltimore-based Alex. Brown. The shares of other brokerages rose on speculation they may also become takeover targets for banks.

Nike, down 4-1/4 at 54-7/8.

Reebok International, up 1-1/4 at 46-3/8.

Smith Barney downgraded Nike to “neutral” from “outperform” and upgraded Reebok International to “outperform” from “neutral.”

Boeing, up 2-1/8 at 100-1/8.

The Seattle-based company is preparing to increase its production pace for all planes by 10 percent. Boeing is also studying how to double its current output for the 737 aircraft.

NASDAQ

Voxware, up 7/8 at 4-7/8.

Microsoft licensed Voxware’s voice and audio compression technologies to embed in Microsoft NetShow 2.0, a system for broadcasting live audio, video and multimedia on the Internet.

AMEX

Organogenesis, up 3-7/8 at 22-1/8

Canadian regulators approved the company’s Apligraf Human Skin Equivalent for marketing.