No Anxiety for Tech, Biotech

Thursday's Nasdaq rally was spurred by strength in the biotech sector, with analyst upgrades spurring ImClone(IMCL Quote), Amgen(AMGN Quote), and Genzyme(GENZ Quote), whose shares rose 4% to 8%.

Among pharma stocks, Merck(MRK Quote) was also upgraded, and added 2.5% on the day.

Tech shares, meanwhile, rallied following a Bank of America upgrade of Intel(INTC Quote), whose shares jumped 4%. Among other big-cap tech, Research In Motion (RIMM Quote), Yahoo! (YHOO Quote), Electronic Arts (ERTS Quote) and eBay (EBAY Quote) were big winners, up between 4.7% and 7.8%.

Aiding the tech rally, the November factory orders report revealed a strong rebound in computer buying. Orders for computers were up 53.4% in November, compared with a 34.2% decline in October. Overall factory orders were up 0.9% in November, weaker than the 1.3% increase analysts expected, but still better than October's 4.7% decline. But orders for metals, machinery, electrical equipment and furniture declined. (Commodities like gold and copper followed oil lower again Thursday, which may portend less inflation but also makes investors nervous about the economy.)

Meanwhile, the Institute for Supply Management's index of non-manufacturing activity showed the services sector is still chugging along. It read 57.1 in December, in line with expectations for a reading of 57.

Wild Start to '07

The first two days of January have been marked by midday reversals on little solid news. The FOMC minutes Wednesday didn't present anything the market didn't know, and Thursday's news was relatively benign despite headlines about "weak" December retail sales reports that were actually mixed.