MIDDAY MARKETS: Florida news helps blue chips

News that the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a Florida Supreme Court ruling that extended the recount in the presidential election boosted blue chips at midday Monday, though techs continued to sag. The Nasdaq shed 23.06 to 2622.23 while the Dow Jones industrial average bulked up 153.19 to 10526.73.

The Inter@ctive Week @Net Index rose 1 to 323.68.

Online advertisers are off to a slow start this year, with impressions and spending only surpass last year's level by the second week in November, according to a report released by Jupiter Media Metrix (Nasdaq: JMXI) Monday. A research note from Merrill Lynch suggested that high order numbers have the bigger players -- Amazon, eBay, and others -- on track to meet fourth quarter estimates.

Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) rose 0.38 to 25, AOL (NYSE: AOL) shed 0.63 to 40.88, eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) was down 3.19 to 31.56 and Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) shed 1.13 to 37.81.

Shares of Qualcomm Inc. (Nasdaq: QCOM) were down 0.19 to 37.250 after surging earlier Monday on the news that the company has signed a memorandum of understanding with Chinese officials to deploy its CDMA technology in that country.

Track Data Corp. (Nasdaq: TRAC) surged 9 percent, or 0.09 to 1.09, Monday after it announced that Knight Trading Group Inc. (Nasdaq: NITE), down 1.13 to 16.44, has agreed to acquire one million shares of Track common stock for $1.25 million. Knight also received a three-year option to acquire an additional two million shares of Track stock for $3.5 million. Story

Transmeta's (Nasdaq: TMTA) IPO underwriters started cheering for the "next Intel" Monday, but investors didn't bite. Shares were off 2.13 to 22.88.

Netzee Inc.'s (Nasdaq: NETZ) run of bad news got even worse Monday. The company announced some key executives were leaving on the heels of downward revisions to its financial outlook going into 2001. Shares dropped 0.09 to 0.91.

Internet communications company ESS Technology Inc. (Nasdaq: ESST), down 4.75 to 5.44, cut its financial forecast for the fourth quarter 2000 and first quarter 2001 Monday, citing sluggish orders for its products.

Among tech bellwethers, Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO), down 5.62 to 45.62, Intel (Nasdaq: INTC), down 8.44 to 32.69, Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL), up 2.13 to 26.88 and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) down 11.88 to 55.31.