Earnings Worries Sink Stocks

Stocks fell Tuesday on rising volume, as earnings worries weighed on everything from tech stocks to bank stocks.

The ISDEX http://www.wsrn.com/apps/ISDEX/ fell 10 to 209, and the Nasdaq dropped 63 to 1962. The S&P 500 lost 17 to 1181, and the Dow dropped 123 to 10,176. Volume rose to 1.24 billion shares on the NYSE, and 1.65 billion on the Nasdaq. Decliners led 18 to 12 on the NYSE, and 23 to 12 on the Nasdaq. For earnings reports, visit our earnings calendar at http://www.wsrn.com/apps/earnings/internet.xpl and reported earnings at http://www.wsrn.com/apps/earnings/ireported.xpl. For after hours quotes and news, visit our after hours trading site at http://www.afterhourstrading.com.

After the bell, Compaq rose modestly despite issuing a revenue warning. DoubleClick traded around unchanged after topping estimates by a penny with a 7-cent loss, but slightly lowering forward estimates.

During the day, Corning fell .98 to 14.12 on an earnings warning and comments that telecom equipment spending could be 12-18 months from recovering. Newport slipped .54 to 23.51 after only modestly lowering its full-year outlook and reaffirming its current quarter.

Applied Materials fell 2.02 to 42.80 on news that the company added more mandatory shutdown days at some plants.

Marimba added .03 to 2.73 on a positive upside preannouncement.

VeriSign rose 2.06 to 53.36 on a pact with Microsoft . GoTo.com rose 1.31 to 19.10, also on a deal with Microsoft.

TiVo surged 1.63 to 6.70 after reaffirming second-quarter and full-year guidance.

Ciena fell 2.56 to a new 52-week low of 29.68 on cautious comments from Merrill Lynch.

Veritas plunged 6.47 to 50.03 on news of an alliance between Brocade and Computer Associates .

Some technical comments on the market: Note: We include charts in the technical market commentary. If you can’t get the charts via the e-mail newsletter version, try this link: http://www.afterhourstrading.com/column.html

Today produced nothing but negatives, so at least from a chart perspective, there is no reason not to expect more downside ahead. About the only good news is that the market is oversold enough on a short-term basis to produce a 1-3 day rally. We’ll begin with the S&P 500 (first chart), which broke critical support on a closing basis (1183, the top of the index’s first wave up off the March low). That looks like an index that is headed back to its lows, but we’ll reconsider if the index can clear 1203-1207 on the forthcoming rally. The Nasdaq (second chart) set a lower low, but managed to finish just above its April 12 peak of 1961.57. Below 1941.57, a big breakout gap from April 17, and the Nasdaq could be headed back to its lows too. 2000 should now be resistance. The Dow (third chart) doesn’t have another strong support until 9950-10,000. 10,250-10,300 is first resistance.

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