MIDDAY MARKETS: Techs drift

Techs were treading water at midday Monday as a couple deals made headlines, and IBM was downgraded. The Nasdaq retreated 1.20 to 3,977.21 and the Dow Jones industrial average gained 49.57 to 11,270.22.

The Inter@ctive Week @Net Index rose 6 to 532.16.

Shares of IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) dipped 4.5 to 125 in morning trading after Goldman Sachs cut estimates for fourth quarter revenue growth.

Diamond Technology Partners (Nasdaq: DTPI), up 0.63 to 73.5, said it would buy Cluster Consulting, a European management consulting firm specializing in wireless technology, for about $930 million.

Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HWP), down 3.75 to 117.25, is in talks to acquire the consulting arm of PricewaterhouseCoopers in a cash and stock deal worth $17 billion to $18 billion.

Cabletron Systems (NYSE: CS), up 1 1/16 to 36 1/8, has acquired Baltimore-based Network Security Wizards on behalf of its Enterasys Network division.

Caminus Corp. (Nasdaq: CAMZ) shot up 3.12 to 19.81 after Banc of America said it had raised its rating on the stock to "strong buy" from "buy."

Iomega Corp. (NYSE: IOM) rose 0.31 to 4.69 after its board of directors authorized the repurchase of up to $150 million in stock.

Saudi Arabia's billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal said on Monday he would buy a forward contract in common stock from the founder of Priceline.com (Nasdaq: PCLN), up 1.5 to 27.25, for an aggregate purchase price of $50 million.

Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) rose 4.63 to 108.75, Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) rose 3.20 to 44.31 and AOL (NYSE: AOL) gained 0.69 to 56.19.

Among other leading tech issues: Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) rose 0.87 to 66.25, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) was unchanged at 69.31, Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) dropped 0.81 to 63.06 and Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) shed 0.75 to 85.81.