The techs, media and telecoms had one of their regular giddy spells, leaping upwards in joy as Dell Computer reaffirmed its forecast for the first quarter.
Mr Niall MacLeod, European equity strategist at Schroder Salomon Smith Barney, said many technology share prices had become "ludicrously cheap" and Dell was a big company, so its news mattered.
"We are beginning to get signs that things are not as bad as we thought," he said. But he cautioned that "we need a few more days like this" before confidence could return.
Mr Navdeep Sheera, semiconductor analyst at SSSB, said Dell's cut-price strategy might gain it market share but that did not mean the total PC market was growing. Having said that, the German chip company Infineon was reporting higher prices for D-Ram chips for the April-June quarter. The IT blue chips were among the strongest gainers yesterday, with Nokia up 7.8 per cent to €27.05, Ericsson 10.6 per cent to SKr57.50, Alcatel 1.6 per cent to €32.41, Siemens 4.8 per cent to €114.05 and Philips 6.5 per cent to €29.96. Infineon rose 3.5 per cent at €41.60.
The rebound had an even sharper effect on some of the smaller tech stocks. Norwegian data storage group Opticom leapt 33 per cent to 694 kroner, helped by continued hopes of an extended co-operation deal with Intel.
But French smart card provider Gemplus fell 21 per cent to €3.71 after it lowered its first-quarter sales forecasts. BNP Paribas cut its rating from "outperform" to "neutral".
Among telecoms, gains of more than 5 per cent were trimmed towards the end of the session, with Sonera closing 4.4 per cent higher at €8.55, Deutsche Telekom up 3.3 per cent at €27.27 and France Telecom rising 4.9 per cent at €71.85.
