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From Briefing.com: 4:20 pm : A day after the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq plunged 1.5% on average, and turned in their worst weekly performances in more than four years, it wasn't overly surprising to see stocks exhibit some sort of a bounce.

However, while today's relief rally was commendable, especially since the beaten-down Financial sector (+1.2%) finally garnered some much needed interest from buyers, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq struggled to even halve Friday's sizable declines.

Before the bell, fears of a possible credit crunch signaling an end to the LBO buyout boom was further echoed by the fact that today didn't mark a Monday of any blockbuster deal making. The day's biggest deal involved Ingersoll-Rand (IR 51.68 +3.54), which agreed to sell some of its business units (e.g. Bobcat) for $4.9 bln in cash. That helped renew some enthusiasm throughout the Industrial sector (+1.5%), but the recent downturn in equities reflecting legitimate concerns about tightening credit conditions was still fresh on investors' minds.

That is until a handful of positive developments began to hit the wires shortly after the afternoon session got underway. A surprise upgrade on Morgan Stanley 's (MS 64.45 +0.08) credit rating, which was raised to "AA-/A-1+" from "A+/A-1" at Standard & Poor's, was the initial catalyst restoring confidence on Wall Street.

Investors also embraced reports that Chicago's Citadel Investment Group is buying the credit positions of Sowood Capital. The Boston-based hedge fund said Friday its bonds lost value as investors fled riskier debt used to fund LBOs; and Citadel's interest suggested there's still plenty of liquidity waiting to be put to work.

Finally, with subprime concerns also acting as a headwind of late, some reassurance on that front gave the market an added boost late in the day. GMAC, which posted a $305 mln loss for Q1 after its home lending unit (ResCap) showed an increase in defaults on subprime loans, reportedly said it had a Q2 gain of $293 mln. The belief that GMAC's upbeat results will bolster earnings for Dow component General Motors (GM 32.62 +1.52), which reports tomorrow morning, fueled a rally throughout the underperforming Auto group and helped keep a bid in a market that languished all morning and, at best, was shaping up to be another victory for the bears. BTK -0.3% DJ30 +92.84 DJTA +1.1% DJUA +0.8% DOT +0.9% NASDAQ +21.04 NQ100 +0.9% R2K +0.8% SOX +1.7% SP400 +0.9% SP500 +14.96 XOI +1.7% NASDAQ Dec/Adv/Vol 1367/1706/2.15 bln NYSE Dec/Adv/Vol 1263/2059/1.86 bln

4:34PM Ixys reports 1Q07 results; expects 2Q07 revs to be relatively flat compared to the June quarter (IXYS) 8.70 +0.26 : Co reports 1Q07 EPS of $0.13, excluding credit adjustments of $4.8 mln and $36.8 mln, vs $0.07 Reuters consensus; revs $75.9 mln vs $71.26 mln Reuters consensus. "We plan to continue buying back shares under our authorized stock buyback program," commented Uzi Sasson, COO and CFO. "Looking forward, we continue to work on improving margins, reducing costs, and building more customer relationships, with the expectation for further company growth. That being said, we typically experience some cyclical weakness during the summer months, especially in Europe. We therefore project revs for the Sept 2007 quarter to be relatively flat as compared to the June quarter."

4:19PM Pixelplus reports 2Q7 results; co expect 3Q07 rev to be greater than revs in 2Q07 (PXPL) 1.53 +0.23 : Co reports 2Q07 EPS of ($0.14) vs ($0.13) Reuters single analyst est; revs $6.1 mln vs $5.90 mln Reuters single analyst est. The Company expects its revenues in the third quarter of fiscal 2007 to be greater than its revenues sustained in the second quarter of fiscal 2007.

4:13PM Advanced Analogic Tech misses by $0.04, issues mixed Q3 guidance (AATI) 9.47 +0.62 : Reports Q2 (Jun) loss of $0.02 per share, $0.04 worse than the Reuters Estimates consensus of $0.02; revenues rose 18.3% year/year to $25.8 mln vs the $24.2 mln consensus. Co issues mixed guidance for Q3, sees EPS of $0.00-$0.02 vs. $0.04 consensus; sees Q3 revs of $26-$28 mln vs. $26.14 mln consensus. For the second half of 2007, the co estimates revenue in the range of $53-$56 mln.

7:15AM KVH Industries announces a 1 mln share repurchase program (or approx 6.7% of the co's outstanding stock) (KVHI) 8.60 :

6:32AM Photon Dynamics acquires Salvador Imaging (PHTN) 10.51 : Co and Salvador Imaging announce that PHTN has acquired all of the outstanding shares of Salvador Imaging in exchange for approximately $20,000,000, of which $8 mln is in cash and the balance in PHTN common stock.

6:31AM Amtech Systems announces $4.9 mln follow-on solar order (ASYS) 10.78 : Co announces it has received a $4.9 mln follow-on solar order for diffusion processing systems from the solar cell industry.

09:56 am QLogic: Needham & Co downgrades Buy to Hold. Needham downgrades QLGC to Hold from Underperform saying suspected, QLGC is not seeing the growth in FCswitches needed to offset slowing growth in Host products (due to a mix shift) and declines in Silicon. The firm says they are changing their rating due to a lack of growth drivers but would expect the stock to have limited downside as QLGC's core business remains highly profitable and steady.