MIDDAY MARKETS: Cisco leads tech revival

A flight to quality sparked the Nasdaq's recovery at midday Monday. Cisco, other tech bellwethers and B2B stocks all made strong gains. The Nasdaq regained 87.60 to 3,408.89, and the Dow Jones industrial average climbed 108.28 to 10,414.05.

The Inter@ctive Week @Net Index gained 22 to 457.53.

The selling trend finally reversed itself Monday as investors focused on technology's big guns. The buying was concentrated on the big names and B2B, while dot.coms and smaller issues were left in the dust.

Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) the most actively traded stock at midday, rocketed up 6 to 63, or 11 percent. Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) was also making big gains, up 4 47/64 to 68 1/4, or 8 percent. Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) was up 7 1/8 to 83 5/8. Applied Materials (Nasdaq: AMAT) was up 7 13/16 to 88 1/8. Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), rose 1 to 75 1/8 and Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) was up 2 to 112 1/2.

B2B shares were bouncing back, as PurchasePro (Nasdaq: PPRO) raced up 8 5/8 to 33 5/8, Vertical Net (Nasdaq: VERT) jumped 3 3/16 to 31 3/16, Commerce One (Nasdaq: CMRC) bounded 5 to 71, while Ariba (Nasdaq: ARBA) fell 4 1/16 to 58 3/16.

Other gains weren't as dramatic; Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) rose 1 5/8 to 48 1/2, Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) rose 1 to 117 and America Online Inc. (NYSE: AOL) rose 1/8 to 55 1/8.

Many analysts expect DoubleClick (Nasdaq: DCLK), up 3 3/8 to 63 15/16, to deliver a first quarter upside surprise Monday after market close.

Other companies expected to report after Monday's bell were on the rise: Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN) was up 5 9/16 to 144 9/16, Go2Net (Nasdaq: GNET) was up 1 1/2 to 49 3/8 while Prodigy (Nasdaq: PRGY) was down 3/8 to 9 3/4.

In merger news, Internet loyalty firm MyPoints (Nasdaq: MYPT), down 7/16 to 14 1/2, agreed to acquire Cybergold (Nasdaq: CGLD), up 1/8 to 5 5/8 in a $157 million stock swap, the companies said Monday.

On the downside, Network Computing Devices (Nasdaq: NCDI) plunged1 to 2 1/16, or 33 percent Monday after auditors flagged the company's operating losses and lack of capital.

After four months of looking for a new CFO, software developer Corel (Nasdaq: CORL) announced John Blaine would take the post. Shareholders weren't impressed; the stock fell 5/32 to 6 11/16.