Market Wrap: Tech Stocks Mixed

Investors today were eager to take advantage of this week's Wall Street rally, as profit-taking pulled the market down the day after the Dow reached a record high.

The Dow fell 127.59, or 1.13%, to 11,198.45, while the Nasdaq dropped 30.98, or 1.10%, to 2,774.62 on 1.1 billion shares traded. The S&P 500 slipped 19.78, or 1.43%, to 1,362.01.

Cisco Systems (CSCO) dominated the headlines today as it announced plans to spend more than $7 billion to acquire optical networking vendors Cerent Corp. and Monterey Networks Inc. Cisco gained 5/16, or 0.46%, to 68-15/16.

Other communications vendors that may be threatened by Cisco's newly acquired capabilities slipped, with Lucent (LU) falling 1-7/8 to 66-3/8, and Nortel Networks (NTL) dropping 2-1/16, or 4.48%, to 43-15/16.

Meanwhile, networking vendor 3Com Corp. (COMS) managed to take a winner's seat on the InformationWeek 100 Stock Index of influential technology companies. 3Com rose 1-7/16, or 6%, to 25-5/16 as the company confirmed it has canceled plans to form a joint venture with Siemens to make gear for voice calls on data and video telecom networks.

On the software side, J.D. Edwards (JDEC) saw a slight gain the day after it reported yesterday that third-quarter losses were not as severe as analysts had anticipated. The ERP vendor gained 5/16, or 1.74%, to 18-5/16. Rivals saw mixed performances, as SAP (SAP) gained 7/8, or 2.67%, to 33-5/8, Baan (BAANF) rose a scant 1/16 to 13-5/16, while PeopleSoft (PSFT) dipped 5/16 to 4-9/16.

Among other software vendors, Microsoft lost 11/16 to close at 94-5/8, Sun Microsystems (SUNW) fell 1-1/8, or 1.47%, to 75-3/16, and Computer Associates (CA) fell 1-7/16 to 51-7/16 after shareholders rejected a proposal to limit stock compensation to executives.

PC vendors mostly saw declines, as Dell dropped 1-1/16, or 2.17%, to 47-15/16, Hewlett-Packard declined 2-7/16, or 2.32%, to 102-5/8, and Compaq (CPQ) fell 11/16, or 2.60%, to 23 5/16. IBM gained 9/16 to close at 122-15/16.

Several key Internet issues fell, with Excite At Home (ATHM) closing down 1-13/16, or 4.26%, to 40-3/4, Amazon.com (AMZN) dropping 4-5/16, or 3.25%, to 128-9/16, and eBay (EBAY) falling 9/16, or .44%, to 128-7/16.