Andy Patrizio
Post-Holiday Malaise Dogs Street
With little to guide investors, the market slumped after the long weekend. Both the Dow and the Nasdaq are down, with the latter hitting a seven-week low. By Andy Patrizio.
Following the long weekend, the stock market couldn't find much motivation for an upward climb, so with nothing to spur buying, the market went down on Tuesday.
With no new news, earnings announcements or government reports on the day after President's Day, the stock market was lacking any impetus to shake off the string of warnings and bad news that drove it down last week. Expect it to be that way for a while, predicts one analyst.
"Call season's over. Now it's people gathering data points and trying to call the bottom, if there is a bottom to be called any time soon," said Will Piersol, analyst with Sutro & Co., in Los Angeles. "People are still reeling after the Nortel and Corning announcements last week, and a lot of talk today about poor business at Intel. So there's a bit of malaise and nothing to get things going."
The market has been in a slump as one large technology leader after another took down their forward projections, dimming prospects of a quick recovery. Only a few technology companies remain to issue fourth quarter reports, including Agilent (A), VerticalNet (VERT) and BEA Systems (BEAS)
The result was a dismal start of the week. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 68.94, or 0.64 percent, to 10,730.88 after spending much of the day in positive territory, while the Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 106.82, or 4.40 percent, to 2,318.56. The Standard and Poor's 500 index lost 22.71, or 1.75 percent, to 1,278.82.
There were a few gainers in this sector today, starting with SBC (SBC), up 0.83 to 48.55, MCI Worldcom (WCOM) rose 9/16 to 16 3/8 and Sprint (FON) gained 0.50 to 22.60. Qualcomm (QCOM) dropped 5 7/64 to 75 33/64, Verizon (VZ) lost 1.07 to 51.45, Covad (COVD) was almost cut in half, losing 1 1/4 to 1 5/8 on news it was closing 260 offices in a severe cutback, and AT&T (T) lost 0.95 to 20.74.
More of the usual volatility in this sector, as Juniper (JNPR) was socked for a loss of 5 1/4 to 74 3/4, Ciena (CIEN) dropped 5 5/16 to 77 5/16, Level 3 (LVLT) was down 2 9/16 to 28 3/16, Cisco (CSCO) fell 2 3/16 to 26 1/16, Corning (GLW) lost 2.95 to 30.05 and Nortel (NT) shed 1.13 to 18.87.
Broadcom (BRCM) plunged 9 3/4 to 64 3/8, AMCC (AMCC) fell 5 21/64 to 38 31/64, nVidia (NVDA) dropped 5 15/16 to 53 9/16 despite positive outlooks for the company on the strength of its Xbox deal with Microsoft. Rambus (RMBS) fell 5 3/4 to 40 5/8, Intel (INTC) dropped 2 15/16 to 31 7/16, AMD (AMD) lost 2.14 to 22.57 and National Semiconductor (NSM) gave up 1.90 to 22.20.
Emulex (EMLX) can't seem to be cut a break. It plunged 6 to 32 1/16 and was socked with two class-action suits today, including one from Milberg Weiss, which is notorious for suing technology companies. EMC (EMC) dropped 4.78 to 49.27, Lexmark (LXK) fell 3.59 to 50.11, IBM (IBM) dropped 3.50 to 111.50, Hewlett-Packard (HWP) lost 2.63 to 30.50, Dell (DELL) shed 1 1/2 to 22 and Gateway (GTW) was off 1.49 to 18.06.
Adobe (ADBE) dropped 2 1/16 to 34 1/4, Citrix (CTRX) lost 2 7/16 to 29 11/16, Intuit (INTU) fell 2 1/8 to 32 11/16, Electronic Arts (ERTS) gave up 2 7/16 to 46 5/16, Microsoft (MSFT) was off 1 7/16 to 55 7/8 and Broadvision (BVSN) closed down 15/16 to 8 5/16.
Manugistics (MANU) was socked for a loss of 7 55/64 to 40 17/64 while i2 (ITWO) dropped 5 to 33 3/16, VeriSign (VRSN) lost 3 7/16 to 56 5/16, Ariba (ARBA) shed 3 1/2 to 18, Commerce One (CMRC) lost 2 5/8 to 21 3/8 and Exodus (EXDS) lost 1 3/4 to 14 3/8. EDS (EDS) jumped 1.38 to 64.00.