The Dow Jones industrials and the Nasdaq composite index ended the first three months of 2004 with losses, while the Standard & Poor's 500 index posted a modest gain. All three gauges were down in March.
Investors sought safety after two days of robust gains and ahead of a much-anticipated jobs report due Friday. In addition, the Institute for Supply Management releases its report on manufacturing activity Thursday.
For the day, the InformationWeek 100 was down 0.4%, or 1.18 points, to 327.52, and the Nasdaq index fell 6.41 points, or 0.3%, to 1,994.22. The Dow fell 24.00 points, or 0.2%, to 10,357.70, and the S&P 500 fell 0.8 of a point, or 0.1%, to 1,126.21. For the month, the Dow fell 2.1%, the Nasdaq fell 1.8%, and the S&P 500 fell 1.6%.
Software maker QLogic Corp. was down $9.69, or 23%, to $33 after saying it expects a revenue shortfall for the fourth quarter because of declining orders from manufacturers and a drop in sales of its storage network components. A number of brokerage firms cut the company's rating.
Other tech issues also ended lower. EMC fell 2.5%, or 35 cents, to $13.61; Cisco Systems fell 1.5%, or 36 cents, to $23.57; AT&T fell 1.2%, or 24 cents, to $19.57; Microsoft fell 1.1%, or 27 cents, to $24.93; Dell fell 0.9%, or 30 cents, to $33.62; Intel fell 0.8%, or 23 cents, to $27.20; and IBM fell 0.5%, or 48 cents, to $91.84. The Nasdaq-100 tracking stock fell 0.2%, or 7 cents, to $35.84, as nearly 86 million shares changed hands.
See the full listing of all the companies in the InformationWeek 100 and the top 5 percentage winners and losers for the last closing at informationweek.com/stocks.