Blue Chips Gaining, but Tech's Got Troubles

Updated from 10:56 a.m. EDT

Stocks traded mixed Monday as blue chips made a modest recovery from the giant selloff in the previous session with help from positive housing-sector news, even as tech shares remained stuck in the red.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 96 points, or 0.8%, to 12,305, and the S&P 500 was adding 6 points, or 0.4%, to 1367. The Nasdaq Composite gave up 17 points, or 0.7%, to 2458 as big tech names Cisco (CSCO Quote), Apple (AAPL Quote) and Google (GOOG Quote) saw weakness.

Blue-chip gains piled higher, however, after the National Association of Realtors said pending-home sales swelled 6.3% in April, far better than the economists' consensus for a 1% drop and up from a March decline of 1%.

Crude oil, which ramped higher by more than $10 a barrel in the last session and helped yank down the Dow by 400 points, remained at extraordinarily high levels in the new session. Still, futures saw a bit of profit-taking amid news that Saudi Arabian oil minister Ali al-Naimi has called Friday's massive gains "unjustified," according to the Saudi Press Agency. Crude recently was off $2.39 to $136.15 a barrel.

Even so, energy names were doing well recently, with oil-and-gas giants Exxon Mobil (XOM Quote) and Chevron (CVX Quote) adding 2.4% and 1.6%, respectively. BP (BP Quote) bumped up 2.5%.

Further, the nationwide average for gas prices at the pump hit the $4 milestone on Sunday, according to AAA, and today it was at another all-time high of $4.023 a gallon.

The U.S. dollar reversed an early dip as crude took further losses, firming 0.3% against the euro to $1.5712 and climbing 1.1% against the yen at 106.14. Gold futures rose $2.80 to $901.80 an ounce.