Technology stocks held on to most of their prior advance, with the SPDR Technology Select Sector ETF Monday rising 0.5% this afternoon although the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index was slipping 0.3% shortly before Monday's closing bell.
In company news, NetEase (NTES) was 6.5% higher after the Chinese online gaming company was identified for taking an undisclosed equity stake in privately held IMVU, which is reforming as a social media firm under the new Together Labs name. Also participating in the more than $35 million strategic investment round was the private-equity firm Structural Capital.
The9 (NCTY) rose nearly 21% after the Chinese online gaming company said it signed five legally binding memorandums of understanding with five bitcoin mining machine owners to buy those processors by issuing a yet-to-be determined number of its class A ordinary shares. After the deal closes, The9 will own 26,007 Bitcoin mining machines with a total hash rate of around 549 petahash per second, representing 0.36% of the global hash rate for bitcoin, it said.
First Solar (FSLR) was finishing 1.2% lower after Monday announcing plans to sell 10 gigawatts of utility-scale photovoltaic energy projects platforms in California, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas to Leeward Renewable Energy Development, a portfolio company of the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System pension fund. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Among decliners, Intel (INTC) fell 2.4% after the chipmaker late Friday filed a registration statement for the potential sale of an indeterminate amount of securities, including common and preferred stock, warrants, depositary shares, purchase contracts and debt.
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