The market in general, however, stumbled as investors grew jittery ahead of key employment figures that will be released tomorrow.
Yahoo led the charge as its stock surged after three brokerage firms raised their investment recommendations for the leading portal a day after it reported strong earnings that exceeded Wall Street's expectations.
The portal surged 14.5 to 190.25, helping drive the Nasdaq Composite Index up 3.49 to 2,860.7. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 51.3 to 10,537, and the CNET Tech Index dropped 10.3 to 2,223.86.
"We are looking for a strong [fourth quarter from Yahoo], driven in part by a potentially solid holiday e-shopping season and also by new users coming online," PaineWebber Internet analyst James Preissler wrote in a report this morning.
"We believe Yahoo is making a transition from an e-commerce model that focuses on hosting merchant sites to one that increasingly monetizes transactions, and thus we expect e-commerce revenues to increase as a percent of total revenues," he added.
Deutsche Banc Alex Brown raised its outlook on Yahoo to a "strong buy" from "buy," while other investment banks, including US Bancorp Piper Jaffray, PaineWebber, and Lehman Brothers, increased their expectations for Yahoo's fourth-quarter revenues.
Most Internet stocks basked in the glow from Yahoo's momentum, but some dropped by the end of the day. Excite@Home climbed 1.5 to close at 48.06, while America Online dropped 1 to 119 and Lycos fell 1.31 to 62.81.
Other Net losers included About.com, which shed 6.25 to 47.63. Barnes & Noble slipped 3 to 23.5 after the company acquired Babbage's Etc., a computer software and video game seller, for US$215 million.
Shares of BMC Software tumbled 6.38 to 63.63 after the company said it anticipated fiscal second-quarter profit would be just shy of analysts' estimates.
IBM dropped 2.81 to 116.38, and Intel slipped 2 to 74.94.
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