TECH STOCKS: Taking It On The Chin

The major indexes headed south Wednesday because of a mix of profit-taking, lower-than-hoped-for earnings reports, and a decision by the U.S. Senate not to pursue a bill to limit class-action lawsuits against businesses.

Tech issues took it on the chin. Amazon.com, which on Tuesday beat analysts' expectations by a penny a share but narrowed its earnings forecast for next year, fell $5.32, or 9%, to $54.03; Red Hat fell 4%, or 54 cents, to $12.81; Advanced Micro Devices fell 2.3%, or 33 cents, to $13.96; Microsoft, which reports earnings Thursday, fell 1.6%, or 46 cents, to $28.89; and eBay fell 1.51%, or 85 cents, to $55.58. One winner was Lucent Technologies, which reported a quarterly profit for the first time since 2000 and rose 33 cents, or 13.5%, to close at $2.78.

For the day, the InformationWeek 100 fell 2.8%, or 8.54 points, to 291.64, and the Nasdaq index fell 2.2%, or 42.83 points, to 1,898.07. The Nasdaq-100 tracking stock fell 1.93%, or 68 cents, to $34.57, on volume of 86.7 million shares.

Less-tech-heavy indexes saw slightly smaller losses. The Dow fell 1.5%, or 149.40 points, to 9,598.24, and the S&P 500 fell 1.5%, or 15.67 points, to 1,030.36.