MARKET CLOSE: Late rally lifts tech shares

Technology stocks staged an impressive rally in late trading Thursday as the Nasdaq composite shot up 43 points to 3,272.14. The Dow Jones industrial average closed up 54 points to 10,380.12.

"Generally you had an oversold condition," said Peter Gottleib, portfolio manager at First Albany Asset Management. "You saw aggressive selling yesterday and this morning and I think this is very positive that the market is showing signs of resilience."

Fiber-optic stocks got off to another rough start Thursday but rallied back in late trading. SDL (SDLI) closed up $6.38 to $240.56. Ciena (CIEN) closed off $5.38 to $103 and JDS Uniphase (JDSU) closed up $3.44 to $74.44 ahead of its earnings report.

Yahoo! (YHOO) inched up 44 cents to $56. America Online (AOL) trimmed 32 cents to $46.70 while Amazon.com (AMZN) and Lycos (LCOS) gained $5 and $3.06 a share, respectively. eBay (EBAY) dropped $1.56 to $52.50.

GoTo.com Inc. (Nasdaq: GOTO) closed unchanged at $12.38 after it said it is buying privately held Internet service company SearchUP Inc. and searching for a new corporate identity.

TheStreet.com (Nasdaq: TSCM) inched up 3 cents to $3.28 after it posted a narrower-than-expected loss for the third quarter, beating Wall Street expectations by three cents.

Microsoft (MSFT) moved up $3.19 to $64.44. Oracle (ORCL) lost 31 cents to $34.06 and Sun Microsystems (SUNW) shed $6.63 to $102.

Among widely held PC stocks, Dell (DELL) rose $1.88 to $27.75; Apple Computer (AAPL) closed unchanged at $18.50; Gateway (GTW) trimmed 16 cents to $47.85 and Compaq (CPQ) picked up $1.75 to $29.90.

Intel (INTC) charged up $3.38 to $44.68. IBM (IBM) added $5.19 to $92.75 and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) tacked on $1.25 to $20.44.