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Market momentum doesn't last

Stocks post modest gains after jumping out of the gate early on, with the Dow climbing as much as 123 points but closing up only 35.27.

Stocks closed only slightly higher today after jumping out of the starting gate early on, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbing as much as 123 points.

The Dow closed less than half a percent higher at 8,601.88--up 35.27 points. The Nasdaq closed only 7.17 points higher at 1,797.99.

Germany's DAX closed up 2.61 percent, or 136.88 points, at 5371.76, while London's Financial Times index closed up 100.7 points at 5,654.4.

Indices in Asia were mixed, but with strong performances from Hong Kong's Hang Seng and Japan's Nikkei. The Hang Seng rose 44.61 points to close at 7,890, while the Nikkei climbed 84.57 to reach 15,072.93.

One of the hardest hit stocks today was enterprise security firm CyberGuard, which continued to plummet after the company was slapped with a shareholder lawsuit. The suit comes on the heels of the news that CyberGuard will restate its third-quarter financial results and that its CEO and and financial officers had been suspended. The stock plummeted about 23 percent, adding to yesterday's 70 percent decline (See related story).

Shares of Ciena closed lower despite climbing in early trading in an attempt to recover from Friday's 45 percent plunge, triggered when AT&T announced that it would no longer evaluate Ciena's products. The stock fell 5.54 percent to 34.125. Ciena shares have traded as high as 92.25 and as low as 26.25 during the past 52 weeks.