The markets opened modestly higher as investors mulled over the possibility of an interest rate cut. The Dow rose 52 points to 13,677 while Nasdaq added 8 points to 2715.

On the upside

Swiss banking giant UBS AG (NYSE: UBS) announced another $10 billion loss to write down subprime lending losses while raising additional cpaital.

AT&T (NYSE: T) planned to buy core routers from networking giant Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO).

High flying LDK Solar (NYSE: LDK) entered into a 10-year contract to deliver solar wafers to Q-Cells AG who will prepay to finance the solar energy product maker.

On the downside

An analyst downgraded Amgen (Nasdaq: AMGN) whose shares were hovering near 52-week lows.

Shares of Learning Tree (Nasdaq: LTRE) tumbled after an analyst downgraded the for-profit education business due to valuation.

NaviSite (Nasdaq: NAVI) posted higher revenues, but profits remained negligible for the hosted application service provider.

In the broad market, advancing issues outpaced decliners by a margin of nearly 2 to 1 on the NYSE and by 5 to 3 on Nasdaq. The Russell 2000 which tracks small cap stocks added 2 points to 788.