MIDDAY MARKETS: Nasdaq holds gains

The Nasdaq upheld Friday's rally at midday Monday, as uncertainty over the next U.S. president began to narrow. The Nasdaq gained 33.23 to 2,937.61 and the Dow Jones industrial average was up 119.44 to 10,589.67.

The Inter@ctive Week @Net Index rose 4 to 357.14.

Commerce One (Nasdaq: CMRC) fell 2.56 to 36.69 on mixed analyst coverage for it and fellow B2B player Ariba (Nasdaq: ARBA), down 7.94 to 70.5. News that Commerce One inked a deal in Korea drove earlier gains.

Intuit Inc. (Nasdaq: INTU), up 0.38 to 46.13, said it would sell its QuickenInsurance business to online insurance service company InsWeb (Nasdaq: INSW), up 0.06 to 2.06, for $14 million in stock.

E-tailers saw booming business on the day known as "Black Friday," and shares responded accordingly on Monday. eToys Inc. (Nasdaq: ETYS) shares rose 0.22 to 2.03.

Charles Schwab (NYSE: SCH), down 0.19 to 27.75 fell after Chase H&Q downgraded the stock. It also toned down forecasts for online brokers E*Trade (Nasdaq: EGRP), down 0.38 to 10.5, Ameritrade (Nasdaq: AMTD), down 0.69 to 10.25 and Knight (Nasdaq: NITE), which will all be affected by lower retail trading volumes.

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A), down 0.06 to 50.875 said it will buy software maker Objective Systems Integrators Inc. (Nasdaq: OSII), unchanged at 31.4375 for about $665 million.

Harmonic (Nasdaq: HLIT), down 0.5 to 9.94, confirmed that it too would be hit by the decision of AT&T's (NYSE: T) Broadband division to stop accepting shipments from suppliers. Revenue is expected to be as much as $3 million lower for the quarter.

Among other leading tech issues Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) rose 1.19 to 45.13, Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) rose 0.03 to 24.16 and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) was up 1.56 to 71.5.

Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) fell 1.63 to 27.31, AOL (NYSE: AOL) gained 1.15 to 44.05 and Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) rose 0.19 to 41.06.