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Tech stocks pull Wall St up for modest gains

New York - US stocks finished with modest gains on Tuesday helped by firm buying in tech stocks, after a day spent mostly well in the red.

Buying in Alibaba (+3.3%), Apple (+2.6%), Gilead Sciences (+3.2%) and Qualcomm (+1.7%) led the market higher generally, while Johnson & Johnson was the top loser on the Dow, down 2.7%.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished at 17 515.23, up 3.66 points (0.02%) from Friday. Markets were closed on Monday for a holiday.

The broad-based S&P 500 added 3.13 (0.15%) at 2 022.55, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite gained 20.46 (0.44%) at 4 654.85.

Stocks were pressed down earlier by the fall in oil prices after the International Monetary Fund sharply cut its global growth estimates by 0.3 percentage points, to 3.5% this year and 3.7% in 2016.

Shares of oil companies and oil service firms sank in the morning, only to recover in late trade. Baker Hughes, which gave a sober outlook for the upcoming year after reporting quarterly earnings early in the day, finished up 1.1%.

Rival Halliburton was also down in the morning but finished up 1.8%.

Chevron (+1.3%) and ExxonMobil (-0.1%) likewise pulled back after sinking in early trade.

Morgan Stanley finished down 0.4% after it came up short in its fourth-quarter earnings, profits coming in well below what analysts expected.

Retail foreign exchange broker FXCM plunged 87.3% in the first trading session since its rescue Friday by Leucadia. Leucadia's injection of a $300m loan was enough to cover unbacked client losses sustained after the Swiss National Bank's unexpected decision on Thursday to abandon the cap on the franc-euro rate.

But since then details of Leucadia's deal suggested FXCM shareholders could still end up with little if Leucadia decides to eventually sell off assets of the firm.

Bond prices gained. The yield on the 10-year US Treasury fell to 1.81% from 1.83% on Friday, while the 30-year dropped to 2.40% from 2.44%.

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