An upbeat outlook from Xilinx (NASDAQ: XLNX) helped chip stocks on Wednesday, but the rest of the market tumbled on a cautious economic outlook from the Federal Reserve.
Xilinx gained nearly 5 percent after the company said it expects a 10 percent sequential increase in sales this quarter, and Intel was another gainer, up 1.8 percent a day after giving an optimistic outlook for PC sales.
Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN), Research in Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM), Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) and Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) were other names dodging the downdraft.
Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) ended the day 1 percent higher on a beneficial accounting change.
The broader market shot higher immediately after the Federal Reserve said the economy is recovering but likely to remain weak for some time. Stocks then spent the final 90 minutes of trading selling off around 2 percent from their highs to their lows of the day. The S&P 500 ended the day 1 percent lower and the Nasdaq off by 0.7 percent.
Juniper Networks (NASDAQ: JNPR) fell 3 percent on a Baird valuation downgrade.
Palm (NASDAQ: PALM) closed fractionally lower after completing a stock offering, while Seagate (NASDAQ: STX) fell 1.4 percent despite raising its financial guidance.
After the close, Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) rose 3 percent on its earnings report.
The Nasdaq lost 14 to 2131, the S&P 500 fell 10 to 1060, and the Dow tumbled 81 to 9748. Volume rose to 5.53 billion shares on the NYSE, and 2.7 billion on the Nasdaq. Decliners led by a 22-14 margin on the NYSE, and 16-10 on the Nasdaq. Downside volume was 81 percent on the NYSE, and 65 percent on the Nasdaq. New highs-new lows were 359-63 on the NYSE, and 146-5 on the Nasdaq.