MIDDAY MARKETS: Buyers return

Buyers came back with a vengeance after the long weekend, bidding techs and blue-chips up at midday Tuesday. The Nasdaq retook 130.63 to 3,335.74 and the Dow Jones industrial average climbed 126.45 to 10,425.69.

The Inter@ctive Week @Net Index rose 20 to 418.54.

The day's economic news was less than inspiring; the consumer confidence gauge for May surpassed analysts' expectations, reaching 144.4 from a revised 137.7 in April, the Conference Board said.

A few deals were driving the gains; SDL (Nasdaq: SDLI) jumped 26 5/16 to 224 1/16, or 13 percent after it said it and JDS Uniphase will extend a contract through 2001.

Ticketmaster Online-CitySearch (Nasdaq: TMCS), up 13/16 to 16 1/16, said it had bought privately-held TicketWeb in an all-stock deal worth $35.2 million.

Juno Online (Nasdaq: JWEB) gained 11/16 to 7 5/8 after it said it has selected LookSmart (Nasdaq: LOOK), up 9/16 to 13 1/4, to provide search services on its portal site.

Handspring (Proposed ticker: HAND) is losing momentum for its IPO. The handheld computer company lowered the price range for offering to $17-$19 a share. Palm (Nasdaq: PALM) was up 1 5/16 to 22 11/16.

Gateway Inc. (NYSE: GTW), up 1 1/4 to 48 1/16, will use Transmeta Corp.'s Crusoe processors in a new line of Internet appliances being developed with America Online Inc.

Other PC stocks, such as Dell (Nasdaq: DELL),up 1/8 to 42 1/2; Compaq (NYSE: CPQ), up 1/8 to 26 7/16 and Apple (Nasdaq: APPL), down 3 to 83 3/8 were active after getting coverage starts from Lehman Brothers. THe investment bank rated Gateway "outperform," Compaq and Dell at "buy" and Apple "neutral."

Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) rose 1 3/4 to 63 3/16 as investors awaited the company's response to the Government's revised breakup plan, which is due Wednesday.

Lucent (NYSE: LU) rose 9/16 to 56 5/16 as the markets looked for confirmation of a rumor it will buy a privately held optical networking company for about $5.7 billion in stock.

Among other leading tech issues: Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) rose 1/16 to 42 7/16, Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) was up 4 to 121 9/16, Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) rose 2 11/16 to 57 5/8, Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) gained 3 5/16 to 76 9/16 and Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) was up 3 1/2 to 70 1/2.

Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) rose 2 11/16 to 49 3/16, Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) rose 6 9/16 to 118 5/8 and America Online Inc. (NYSE: AOL) gained 2 9/16 to 51 1/16.