Stocks surged in the final hour of trading on Tuesday, led higher by strong earnings from Openwave and EMC. Broadcom topped estimates after the bell.

The ISDEX http://www.wsrn.com/apps/ISDEX/ surged 23 to 439, and the Nasdaq rose 82 to 2840. The S&P 500 climbed 17 to 1360, and the Dow rose 71 to 10,649. Volume rose to 1.22 billion shares on the NYSE, and 2.26 billion on the Nasdaq. Advancers led by 19 to 8 on the NYSE, and 23 to 14 on the Nasdaq. Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan testifies on Capitol Hill on Thursday, a week before the Fed's next meeting. For earnings reports, visit our earnings calendar at http://www.wsrn.com/apps/earnings/internet.xpl and reported earnings at http://www.wsrn.com/apps/earnings/ireported.xpl. For after hours quotes and news, visit our after hours trading site at http://www.afterhourstrading.com.

After the bell, Broadcom gained a point to 135 after beating estimates by a penny with 32-cent earnings, and revenues of $376 million topped estimates of $370 million. Compaq surged 10% after hours after beating estimates by 2 cents with 30-cent earnings, and Siebel Systems soared on better than expected results.

During the day, Openwave soared 13 to 66 1/4 on the surprise of the earnings season, reporting earnings of 9 cents a share, 12 cents better than estimates. Revenue grew 36% sequentially, and analysts raised earnings estimates for 2001 by more than 200%, from 15 cents a share to 50 cents a share.

EMC rose 3 1/16 to 79 9/16 after the company beat estimates by 2 cents with 25-cent earnings. Vitesse rose 8 1/4 to 75 1/2 after beating estimates by a penny with 25-cent earnings. FTD.com surged 1 1/8 to 3 3/8 after posting yet another profitable quarter. Interwoven, up 1 11/16 to 31 3/16, beat estimates by a penny with 2-cent earnings. FileNet surged 6 to 28 1/16 after topping estimates.

FreeMarkets led to the downside, off 5 to 21 11/16 after beating estimates by 4 cents with a 27-cent loss. Analysts were concerned about lower than expected auction volumes. Texas Instruments fell 3 9/16 to 45 after missing estimates by 2 cents with a 31-cent loss and lowering forward guidance.

iPrint.com lost 1/4 to 1 3/32 despite beating estimates by a penny with a 23-cent loss. Extended Systems, down 3 9/16 to 24 15/16, beat estimates by 2 cents with a 15-cent loss. DigitalThink, off 1/2 to 15 1/8, met estimates with a 17-cent loss. Geoworks, down 3/16 to 4 11/16, missed by a penny with a 23-cent loss.

DoubleClick climbed 2 to 17 1/4 after the Federal Trade Commission closed its inquiry into the company's ad serving and data collection practices.

E*Trade, up 3/4 to 13 1/16, announced that it is moving to the New York Stock Exchange next month, to trade under a new symbol of ET.

Homestore.com added 1 3/16 to 28 1/16 on news that AOL Time Warner has purchased a 5.7% stake in the company.

InfoSpace, down 1 1/32 to 6, continued to fall on yesterday's management shakeup.

Some technical comments on the market: Note: We are now including charts in the technical market commentary. If you can't get the charts via the e-mail newsletter version, try this link: http://www.afterhourstrading.com/column.html

The Nasdaq showed some nice strength today, but so far the index is just rising beneath its smaller rising channel broken yesterday (the gray lines), and the index closed right at its larger rising channel boundary pierced last week (the black lines). That action would appear to be a prelude to a correction of some sort; that's a lot of resistance to overcome. On the other hand, a strong up move in the morning could lead to quite a breakout in tech stocks. As we have said, we expect any pullback to be modest, perhaps to the gaps at 2618.55 on the Nasdaq and 2470.72 on the Nasdaq 100, and certainly no lower than 2450 on the Nasdaq, the lower channel boundary in that chart. As we've said, those gaps do not necessarily need to fill right away because they occurred on a breakout, but the partial filling of those gaps makes us think the market may finish the job before moving substantially higher. Tomorrow is shaping up to be a critical day on the Nasdaq; if it's going to surprise everyone and go a lot higher, this would be the place to do it. But it's going to have to overcome a lot of resistance and overbought indicators to do it.

The S&P 500 had the most surprising show of strength today: the index surged back into its smaller rising channel broken yesterday (the gray lines) and closed right on that lower gray line. The index also set a higher high today, another positive.

Also on the plus side, regardless of whether we look at the linear (point-based) or logarithmic (percentage-based) charts, the Nasdaq and S&P 500 remain above the 4 1/2-month downtrends they broke out of recently. Those broken downtrend lines are providing support on both indexes, a real plus. We reprint the logarithmic charts below; the linear charts, as should be expected, show an even bigger breakout out of those downtrend lines.

The Dow is so far holding onto its December bottom of 10,500, and is looking modestly better today. Critical support is 10,300 on the Dow, and a close above 11,007 would be bullish, particularly if the Dow Transports can get back above 3000 and stay there. The Trannies closed at 3002 today.

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