TECH STOCKS: The Advance Continues--SlowlyTECH STOCKS: The Advance Continues--Slowly

The markets shook off some early doldrums Tuesday and continued their October advance amid a batch of positive earnings reports.

Our information 100 index rose 1.74 points, or 0.6%, to 305.38. The rest of the indexes also posted small gains. The Nasdaq Composite rose 9.66 points, or 0.5%, to 1,943.19. The S&P 500 rose 4.13 points, or 0.4%, to end the day at 1,049.48. The Dow industrials rose 48.60 points, or 0.5%, to close at 9,812.98, the first time the Dow has finished above 9.800 since May 2002.

The Nasdaq-100 tracking stock rose 9 cents to $35.33; volume was only about 61 million shares.

Before the bell, the day's big news was EMC snapping up Documentum in an all-stock deal worth about $1.7 billion. Documentum's shares rose $4.12, or 16.9%, to $28.54 on the news. EMC shares fell $1.11, or 7.7%, to $13.34.

Intel, the world's largest maker of semiconductors, reported after the closing bell that its quarterly profit more than doubled on higher revenue driven by record unit shipments of microprocessors and chipsets. Net income was $1.7 billion, or 25 cents a share, compared with $686 million, or 10 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue for the quarter was $7.8 billion, compared with $6.5 billion a year ago, the company said. Both figures exceeded Wall Street's expectations, and Intel's share price, which has already more than doubled this year, rose in after-hours trading from its closing price of $31.08.