TECH STOCKS: Hurricane Puts Damper On Winning Week

Hurricane Isabel--and Thursday's hurricane of stock-market activity--resulted in all the major indexes closing lower Friday.

Investors chose to lock in profits after Thursday's heavy buying, while many people remained without power on the Eastern seaboard on Friday in the aftermath of Isabel. However, all the indexes were up for the week, with the tech-centric ones showing the biggest gains.

The InformationWeek 100 fell 0.58 points, or 0.2%, on Friday to close at 292.83, a gain of 3.1% for the week. The Nasdaq fell 3.85 points, or 0.2%, to 1,905.70, but was up 2.73% for the week. The Nasdaq-100 tracking stock fell 3 cents to $34.58, as more than 69.7 million shares changed hands, but it rose 2.7% for the week.

Red Hat, a leading distributor of Linux software, soared a day after it reported a second-quarter profit versus a year-ago loss, thanks to a jump in corporate subscription sales. Red Hat shares rose $1.48, or 17.6%, to $9.88 and were among the Nasdaq's biggest percentage gainers.

The Dow Jones industrials fell 14.31 points, or 0.2%, to 9,644.82, but finished the week up 1.8%. The S&P 500 fell 3.28 points, or 0.3%, to 1,036.30, but rose 1.7% for the week.