A sales warning from Tessera Technologies (NASDAQ: TSRA) weighed on the chip sector a day before the government’s monthly jobs report.
Tessera shares tumbled 14 percent after cutting its fourth- and first-quarter revenue guidance, citing lower than expected royalties from microelectronics and DRAM companies.
The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index lost 1.1 percent on the day, weighed down by Micron (NYSE: MU), SanDisk (NASDAQ: SNDK), Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) and AMD (NYSE: AMD), but Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN) managed to escape with a small gain on news of an e-book deal and other news from the Consumer Electronics Show (CES).
Qwest (NYSE: Q), InfoSpace (NASDAQ: INSP) and Comsys (NASDAQ: CITP) surged after raising their financial outlooks, while Tellabs (NASDAQ: TLAB) continued to add to its gains.
GameStop (NYSE: GME) plunged after lowering its outlook.
Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), EMC (NYSE: EMC) and VMware (NYSE: VMW) were other decliners.
Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) and Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) fell as France weighed an Internet advertising tax.
Friday will bring with it the government’s monthly jobs report. Briefing.com reported that economists expect a loss of 35,000 jobs for December, slightly worse than November, as the job market stabilizes following two years of steep job losses.
The Nasdaq slipped 1 to 2300, the S&P 500 added 4 to 1141, and the Dow rose 33 to 10,606. Volume rose to 5.27 billion shares on the NYSE, and 2.3 billion on the Nasdaq. Advancers led by a 22-15 margin on the NYSE, and 16-11 on the Nasdaq. Upside volume was 68 percent on the NYSE, and 54 percent on the Nasdaq. New highs-new lows were 460-58 on the NYSE, and 124-10 on the Nasdaq.