MARKET CLOSE: Techs stage late rally

Technology stocks took off in late trading Thursday as the Nasdaq composite rallied up 101 points to close at 3,759.78. The Dow Jones industrial average moved up 19 points to end at 10,706.21.

After spending the first half of the trading day in the red, the tech sector bounced back as investors snapped up leaders ahead of Friday's key employment report.

"It is getting to the point where a lot of people feel that it's overdone," said Charles Payne, head analyst at Wall Street Strategies, referring to the high-tech crunch. "There are a whole lot of people out there who want to use this sell-off as an opportunity to pick up these high-flyers on the cheap."

Sun Microsystems (SUNW), which had been stagnate for most of the week, shot up 6 7/16 to 107 11/16. Oracle (ORCL) gained 4 5/16 to 77 7/16 and Microsoft (MSFT) closed up 7/8 to 70 1/4.

Lehman Brothers put a damper on wireless stocks after it issued a report that Motorola was telling suppliers it was seeing lower demand for handsets, putting pressure on wireless firms. Motorola (NYSE: MOT) shares fell 1/2 to 36 1/8 while Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and Ericsson (ERICY) fell 1 1/2 and 1/16 a share, respectively.

Intel (INTC) shares closed up 1 3/4 to 65 1/16 while Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and IBM (IBM) closed up 2 and 1 13/16 a share, respectively.

Kulicke & Soffa (Nasdaq: KLIC) lost 5 1/2 to 16 5/8 after it said it's delaying some order shipments. Applied Materials (AMAT) closed off 3 9/16 to 69 and Novellus Systems (NVLS) dropped 4 11/16 to 48 1/4.

Among widely held PC stocks, Apple Computer (AAPL) moved up 3/4 to 48; Gateway (GTW) added 3 1/8 to 55 5/8; Compaq (CPQ) picked up 1 1/8 to 28 7/8 and Dell (DELL) ended up 1 3/8 to 40 15/16.

Internet stocks made decent gains as well as Yahoo! (YHOO) rose 4 1/16 to 131 3/16 while America Online (AOL) and Amazon.com (AMZN) picked up 1 5/16 and 11/16 a share, respectively. Lycos (LCOS) gained 2 1/16 to 60 1/8 and eBay (EBAY) closed up 1 1/8 to 50.