TECH STOCKS: Tough Week Continues

A difficult week on Wall Street continued Thursday, as an otherwise ho-hum day of nearly unchanged indexes went south after news broke that the International Atomic Energy Agency had found additional traces of weapons-grade uranium in Iran. By day's end, all of the indexes took it on the chin, as did many of the larger technology holdings.

The tech-heavy indexes were hit hardest, with our InformationWeek 100 falling 4.40 points, or 1.6%, to 275.46, while the Nasdaq fell 26.46 points, or 1.4%, to 1,817.24. The Dow industrials fell 81.55 points, or 0.9%, to 9,343.96, and the S&P 500 fell 6.11 points, or 0.6%, to 1,003.27.

Among tech issues, Hewlett-Packard was one of the day's notable losers, falling 70 cents, or 3.5%, to $19.26. Other tech stocks faired only slightly better. Cisco Systems fell 26 cents, or 1.3%, to $20.06, Intel fell 33 cents, or 1.2%, to $27.45, and Microsoft fell 22 cents, or 0.8%, to $28.24. The Nasdaq-100 tracking stock fell 43 cents, or 1.3%, to $32.79 on heavy volume of 113.8 million shares. The continued sell-off across the markets was attributed to a desire to pocket profits from the market's recent rally.