Preopen Trading: Good News for Semis Signals Positive Open

Timing is everything. After yesterday's blah day on Wall Street, news from the

Semiconductor Industry Association

that semiconductor sales are expected to

grow 37% couldn't have come at a better time.

The news got preopen trading on

Instinet

off to a racing start, with

ASM Lithography

(ASML) - Get Report

the second-most active stock. It lately was up 38 cents to $27.69 on 70,000 shares.

The news had

Intel

(INTC) - Get Report

and

Rambus

(RMBS) - Get Report

jumping too.

Also, this morning the recently merged

Terra Lycos

(TRLY)

, which just started trading under that name and the "TRLY" ticker Thursday, was up $1.13 to $24.13 on 172,650 shares this morning, and was the most actively traded stock. Wednesday, European analysts initiated buy ratings on the stock, saying the company was going to be a winner in Europe. The company has continued to expand; its European unit announced overnight that it will buy leading Paris-based Web site MultiMania for $191 million.

Also today,

WorldCom

( WCOM) was making a comeback after being the most popular stock on the

Nasdaq

Wednesday for the wrong reasons. The stock

tumbled after it warned of lower-than-expected earnings and said it would create two tracking stocks.

Early futures action was indicating a flat to positive open.

S&P 500 futures on

Globex

lately were up 6 to 1438, about 6 points above fair value as calculated by

Prudential Securities

.

Nasdaq 100

futures were up 32.5 to 3300, about 1 point below fair value as calculated by

TheStreet.com

.

Europe's major indices were tentatively higher going into midsession, with France's

CAC-40

up 0.1%, Germany's

Xetra Dax

up 0.6% and the U.K.'s

FTSE 100

up 0.2%. Japan's

Nikkei 225

lost 0.2% overnight, while Hong Kong's

Hang Seng

slipped 0.4% (see today's

Asian Markets Update for more).

For Wednesday's postclose trading, see The Night Watch.