By Gavin Adamson

(April 17 – 17:00 ET) – Investors hunting for undervalued tech stocks after last week’s sell-off buoyed North American markets.

Both the Dow Jones industrial average and Nasdaq were led upwards by computer software and hardware stocks. Intel, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, Cisco Systems, Hewlett Package and Texas Instruments were among the most buoyant.

The Dow closed up 276.12 points to reach 10,581.89. It was also helped by Citigroup, one of a number of financial services stocks which saw gains. Still, declines beat out the gains by 20:10.

On the Nasdaq composite, which notched up to 217.41 points to 3538.70, losers outpaced winners by a margin of 30:13.

On the Toronto Stock Exchange it was much the same story. The TSE 300 composite index gained 269.09 points to 8,769.60, led by BCE and Nortel, which added C$10.45 to $149.45, and $11.65 to $148 respectively. The banks edged up as well. The Royal Bank took on $1 to $72.50, Toronto-Dominion Bank added 30¢ to $35.80 and the Bank of Montreal found 90¢ to $52.90.

Among the other well known techs, Research in Motion settled down by 80¢ to
$54.70. Certicom lost $4.75 to $60.75, and JD Uniphase bolted upwards by $27 to
$146.

The Canadian Venture Exchange’s tech stocks led its composite index up a little, by 34.38 points, to 3,397.28. Unique Broadband Systems up 20% to $4.69, and Ecompark, up 11% $1.64, led the way on the upside.