The Night Watch: Mercury Climbs, Juniper Falls

Widely held tech stocks are inching higher in the extra session.

Author:: TSC Staff
Publish date:: Apr 11, 2002 5:10 PM EDT

After big losses in the

regular session, traders were helping technology shares inch higher in after-hours Instinet action.

Mercury Interactive

(MERQ)

was the volume leader and the top percentage gainer after beating analysts' first-quarter earnings estimates. The stock was up 8.8% to $32.02.

Also moving to upside was

Microchip Technology

(MCHP) - Get Report

, which tacked on 1.6% to $43.40 after declaring a 3-for-2 stock split.

Juniper Networks

(JNPR) - Get Report

was losing ground on the heels of its quarterly report. The company met forecasts for the latest quarter, but investors were sending the stock down 2.4% to $10.09.

Elsewhere on the volume leader board,

Oracle

(ORCL) - Get Report

was up 1% to $11.05.

Sun Micro

(SUNW) - Get Report

was up 0.4%, while

Microsoft

(MSFT) - Get Report

and the

Nasdaq 100 Unit Trust

(QQQ) - Get Report

were each up 0.1%.

Intel

(INTC) - Get Report

was down 0.1%, and

Cisco

(CSCO) - Get Report

was losing 0.9%.

Volume was a little heavier than it has been in the past two sessions. In the first hour of extra activity, around 2.7 million shares changed hands among the top-20 most active issues on the Instinet platform.