STOCKS : Late Buying Pushes Dow 18.56 Higher

Blue chip stocks ended with a solid gain Tuesday after late buy programs helped rouse Wall Street out of a daylong slump.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed up 18.56 points at 3,029.07. Advancing issues outnumbered declines 876 to 688 on the New York Stock Exchange, as Big Board volume came to 171.45 million shares, up from 146.01 million Monday.

Stock prices dipped early in the session after the Conference Board, a business research group, reported its monthly index of consumer confidence fell 3.5 points to 72.7, the third straight monthly decline. The survey showed consumers were less optimistic about employment trends and remained ambivalent about the economy’s future.

Buy programs helped stocks rebound late in the day. But many analysts said the bounce was technical, and that investors generally remained wary about stepping back into the market ahead of third-quarter earnings results.

Traders noted that most broader stock indexes, such as the small-stock NASDAQ composite index, posted smaller percentage gains than the Dow.

Among the market highlights:

* Cellular phone stocks rallied on news that Bell Atlantic will buy Metro Mobile’s cellular operations for $1.65 billion. Metro Mobile gained 1 7/8 to 21, and other cellular stocks rocketed. Lin Broadcasting rose 5 1/4 to 76, Contel Cellular rose 2 1/4 to 19 1/4, and Century Telephone gained 2 7/8 to 26 3/4.

Meanwhile, U.S. West, like Bell Atlantic a former Baby Bell company, tumbled 2 1/8 to 35 3/8. Dean Witter lowered its 1991 and 1992 earnings estimates.

* Computer chip firm Micron Technology rose 1 3/8 to 15 5/8. Kidder Peabody reaffirmed a buy rating after the company reported sharply higher fourth-quarter earnings.

Another tech firm, El Segundo-based Computer Sciences, continued to rise on news of a 10-year computer services contract the firm received from General Dynamics. Computer Sciences gained 2 5/8 to 64 3/4 on top of a rise of 2 1/2 on Monday.

Meanwhile, General Dynamics itself leaped 3 7/8 to 45 5/8 after Goldman Sachs raised earnings estimates, citing an improved outlook for the defense firm.

* Disney jumped 2 to 114 1/4. The company will hold a meeting for analysts on Sunday in Orlando.

* Compression Labs gained 2 1/4 to 21 1/4 on news that the company was chosen by Sprint as its vendor to provide systems for Sprint’s new video-conferencing group.

* Modtech, a producer of modular classrooms especially for California school districts, fell 1/2 to 6 after saying it is planning layoffs. The company is being hurt by school budget constraints.

Overseas, a surge in engineering group Mannesmann AG’s shares breathed life into an otherwise dull Frankfurt bourse. The DAX average rose 12.47 to 1,626.63.

Tokyo stocks ended firmer but off their highs with the 225-share Nikkei average closing up 140.96 points at 23,333.70.

Share prices finished lower on London’s Stock Exchange, undermined by political uncertainty. The Financial Times 100-share average fell 20.8 points to 2,579.5.

Credit

Treasury securities were narrowly mixed as bonds came under selling pressure, but some shorter-term notes eked out small gains.

The Treasury’s 30-year bond lost 5/32 point, or $1.56 cents per $1,000. Its yield edged up to 7.88% from late Monday’s 7.87%.

The federal funds rate, the interest on overnight loans between banks, was unchanged from late Monday’s 5.25%.

Currency

The dollar closed higher in domestic trading after falling in Europe.

The dollar gained in early trading but turned lower after the release of the Conference Board’s consumer confidence index.

In New York, the dollar rose to 1.687 German marks from 1.674 marks Monday and to 133.45 Japanese yen from 132.84 yen Monday.

Commodities

Crude oil prices jumped on a Security Council deadline for Iraq to release U.N. inspectors, but the market relinquished most of the gain by the close, after Saudi Arabia told fellow OPEC members that it wouldn’t curtail production.

Light, sweet crude oil for delivery in November settled 12 cents higher at $22.19 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

On New York’s Commodity Exchange, gold rose and silver futures prices climbed to a two-month high, which traders attributed to some fear of a military conflict in the Persian Gulf.

October gold rose $2.90 to $354.00 an ounce and September silver settled 8.2 cents higher at $4.25 an ounce.

Market Roundup, D8