McAfee, Broadcom Beat the Street

Technology earnings reports continued to roll in late Thursday, with Broadcom and McAfee beating estimates and Gateway shares falling after the company reported a 9% sales decline.

Broadcom and McAfee shares gained in late trading after the two companies reported double-digit sales growth that beat Wall Street expectations, but Gateway shares fell 11% after the company missed sales forecasts and reported lower gross margins but met profit expectations of 2 cents a share. BMC lost ground after lowering its outlook.

Stocks fell during the day on concern about loan troubles at HSBC and New Century , but better than expected retail sales and strength in technology stocks helped pare early losses.

EMC shares surged on news that the company will spin off 10% of its VMware division in an IPO.

Alcatel Lucent rose ahead of its earnings report due out Friday morning.

EDS , Akamai , TeleTech and Sina gained on their results.

Spectralink soared on a buyout offer from Polycom .

Syntax-Brillian , Riverbed and Isilon fell on their earnings reports.

Mellanox and Switch and Data rose in their IPOs.

The Nasdaq slipped 2 to 2488, the S&P 500 lost 1 to 1448, and the Dow fell 29 to 12,637. Volume rose to 2.82 billion shares on the NYSE, but declined to 2.05 billion on the Nasdaq. Decliners led 16-15 on the NYSE, and 15-14 on the Nasdaq. Downside volume was 52% on the NYSE, and 52% on the Nasdaq. New highs-new lows were 306-22 on the NYSE, and 177-41 on the Nasdaq.