It was a big day for real-world retailers on Friday, but investors continued to go bonkers over the online variety. The Nasdaq was up 31 to a record-high 2016 in abbreviated trading. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 18 to 9333.
Light trading and a 1 p.m. EST market close helped magnify the gains of e-tailers. The most active Nasdaq issue was Books-a-Million, closing up 26 to 38 15/16, a gain of 200 percent. The gains were on top of a big gains Friday after the company launched an enhanced Web site.
Books-a-Million was joined by other e-tailing stocks as Egghead.com rose a whopping 10 3/16 to 31 5/8, Onsale jumped 37 5/8 to 97 5/8, and CDNow added 9 7/8 to 26 7/8. With those gains, Egghead.com looked like a laggard -- only up 47 percent.
Open Market, which supplies e-commerce software, gained 8 5/16 to 20 3/4.
With shares of Amazon.com, eBay and Yahoo! all trading above the $US200 mark, investors have been flocking to the second-tier names, which appear to be relative bargains.
Amazon.com gained 6 5/16 to 216 5/8, Yahoo! surged 7 1/16 to 216 15/16, and eBay added 13 1/2 to 218.
