Downgrades to Amazon.com and Microsoft sent tech stocks lower on Tuesday, and a revenue miss by Home Depot weighed on the broader market.
The Nasdaq lost 19 to 1374, the S&P 500 declined 3 to 896, and the Dow slipped 11 to 8474. Volume rose to 1.33 billion shares on the NYSE, but declined to 1.61 billion on the Nasdaq. Decliners led 18 to 14 on the NYSE, and 18 to 13 on the Nasdaq. Downside volume was 60% on the NYSE, and 73% on the Nasdaq. New highs-new lows were 22-28 on the NYSE, and 39-36 on the Nasdaq.
After the close, Portal Software beat estimates and Analog Devices
matched estimates.
During the day, Agilent soared 22% after topping estimates.
But Microsoft , down 2%, and Amazon
, off 5%, weighed on the tech sector after brokerage firms downgraded the two on valuation concerns. Microsoft also said it will limit the use of ‘critical’ security warnings.
EMC lost 9.5% on a negative outlook.
IBM lost 1% despite a Department of Energy contract to build the world’s two largest supercomputers. Vignette
surged 11% on an expanded alliance with Big Blue.
AOL , down 1%, laid off 15% off its online marketing group.
Intel , off 2.2%, released 10-Gb optical components and faced more competition from AMD.
Yahoo fell 5.6% on a day when the company appealed to advertisers to use the Internet.
Nokia , off 2.8%, unveiled a new phone that doubles download speeds.
Cisco , down 2%, made several security announcements, and HP
unveiled new storage products.
NVIDIA edged higher on positive guidance.
Genesis Microchip lost 7% on a downgrade.
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