
The Night Watch: Late Traders Take a Little Breather
The extended session Wednesday was a little calmer than regular trading, but most issues on the most-actives list were holding their closing levels or even inching higher.
McLeodUSA
(MCLD)
, which reached a restructuring plan with Forstmann Little and a group of secured lenders earlier this week, was up 2.9% to 35 cents in extra trading.
Oracle
(ORCL) - Get Report
, whose CEO, Larry Ellison, has been fairly optimistic the last two days, was active but unchanged, at $15.37.
In the first half hour of trading, around 3 million shares had changed hands on the Instinet platform among the 20 most active stocks.
Cisco
(CSCO) - Get Report
was flat at $21.54, and
Dell
(DELL) - Get Report
was tacking on 0.1% at $29.69. The
Nasdaq 100 Tracking Stock
(QQQ) - Get Report
was unchanged at $42.83, and
General Electric
(GE) - Get Report
, which normally doesn't make the volume leaders' list in after-hours trading, was level at $37.55.
Intel
(INTC) - Get Report
was inching ahead by 0.2% to $34.69, and
ExxonMobil
(XOM) - Get Report
traded up 2.6% to $39.90.
Many of the biggest percentage gainers and losers were small stocks trading on exceedingly light volume.
Joy Global
(JOYG)
, a maker of mining equipment, was up 12.3% to $18.88, but only 1,000 shares had moved.
Dixie Group
(DXYN) - Get Report
, a carpet and rug maker, was off 11% to $4.45, but the issue wasn't being actively traded.
Insituform Technologies
(INSUA)
, a provider of services for rehabilitating sewer, water and other underground piping systems, was losing 5.1% to $23.05.
Among other movers,
Pacific Sunwear
(PSUN)
was down 5.6%, and
XM Satellite Radio
(XMSR)
was dropping 8.2%.
Enron
(ENE)
fell 15.8% to 85 cents.