Strong Tech Earnings No Match for Bank Worries

The major stock indexes have gained about 60 percent off their March lows and corporate earnings are beginning to look up, but Wednesday provided a fresh reminder of the crisis that precipitated the worst bear market and recession since the 1930s.

Tech stocks were rallying on better than expected results from Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) and SanDisk (NASDAQ: SNDK) when a noted analyst’s downgrade of Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) sent the market to a loss in the final 45 minutes of trading.

Concerns about loan quality at Wells Fargo and price cuts by Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) left investors worrying once again about the pace of economic recovery.

Sun (NASDAQ: JAVA) lost ground on news of more layoffs, but Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) continued to gain following its stellar earnings news.

Polycom (NASDAQ: PLCM) and ClickSoftware (NASDAQ: CKSW) tumbled following their quarterly reports.

After the close, eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) provided another source of worry with current quarter guidance that was a little light of estimates, but VMware (NYSE: VMW) managed to beat Wall Street expectations.

EMC (NYSE: EMC) and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) will report earnings on Thursday, followed by a rare Friday morning report from Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT).

The Nasdaq lost 12 to 2150, the S&P 500 fell 9 to 1081, and the Dow lost 92 to 9949. Volume rose to 5.62 billion shares on the NYSE, and 2.59 billion on the Nasdaq. Decliners led by a 24-13 margin on the NYSE, and 18-8 on the Nasdaq. Downside volume was 73 percent on the NYSE, and 73 percent on the Nasdaq. New highs-new lows were 453-65 on the NYSE, and 155-19 on the Nasdaq.