US STOCKS-IBM spurs rally on Wall Street

(Updates to midafternoon)

By Kristina Cooke

NEW YORK, Jan 14 (Reuters) - U.S. stocks rebounded on Monday from last week's losses after tech bellwether IBM (IBM.N) posted upbeat preliminary quarterly results, spurring a broad rally in technology shares.

The surprise report ahead of International Business Machines Corp's scheduled earnings release on Thursday eased some investors' concerns about how much the slowing U.S. economy will cut into corporate profits.

More than half of IBM's revenue gains were due to currency benefits, suggesting other companies with foreign customers could profit from the weakened dollar.

"It's almost inevitable a recession is going to occur," said Ben Halliburton, managing director at Traditional Capital Management LLC in New Jersey.

"You definitely want to have more multinationals than U.S.-only companies and that strategy will continue to play out for six to 12 months."

The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI was up 143.07 points, or 1.13 percent, at 12,749.37. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index .SPX was up 10.61 points, or 0.76 percent, at 1,411.63. The Nasdaq Composite Index .IXIC was up 29.90 points, or 1.23 percent, at 2,469.84.

IBM's shares rose 6 percent to $103.55, and made up about 40 percent of the Dow's advance. Other blue-chip tech stocks also gained, including microchip maker Intel Corp (INTC.O), up 4.3 percent at $22.94 and computer-maker Hewlett-Packard (HPQ.N) up 2.5 percent to $46.13.