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Stocks made their way to solid gains after a soft start, but pressure picked up after stocks failed to extend the advance in afternoon trade. Still, the major indices finished the session modestly higher.A lack of upbeat headlines and a stronger dollar left buyers with little reason to get back into the action. The tepid tone was reflective of broader sentiment, which has some in fear that the stock market may be overextended after its rally in the past year.

Today marked the one-year anniversary of the bull market on Wall Street — but the celebration was remarkably low-key, with traders unwilling to push the major market indexes too far from the breakeven line. The telecom sector provided a bit of bullish momentum, after Cisco Systems (CSCO) unveiled its speedy new CRS-3 router. The new device is expected to relieve some of the burden on AT&T’s (T) notoriously sluggish network, sending shares of Ma Bell notably higher today.

Elsewhere, a few financial stocks also tipped the scales in the bulls’ favor. Citigroup (C)served as the group’s ringleader, with the stock soaring after Fox Business reported that the government may be ready to sell its 27% stake sometime within the next several months that Citi is floating a big preferred-stock offering tonight and that Barclays is shopping around for a U.S. bank. Options action on Citi was heavy. The Citi news provided a halo boost for other wards of the state, including American International Group (AIG), as well as mortgage-lending siblings Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) up 10%.

Other big movers were:

Apple AAPL $223.02 up 1.8%

Ebay EBAY $25.51 up 2.7%

Wabash National Corp WNC $5.04 up 20.5%

Maguire Properties Inc MPG $2.47 up 14.35%

Systemax Inc SYX $20.20 up 14.25%

Minco Gold Corp MGH $1.48 up 62%

NovaGold Resources NG $6.08 up 9.2%

 

Tags: aapl, AIG, C, Citigroup, CSCO, EBAY, FNM, FRE, MGH, MPG, NG, SYX, T, WNC

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 at 5:26 pm and is filed under Contributors, Large Cap Stocks, Stock Market News, Technology Stocks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.