MARKET CLOSE: Dow, Nasdaq take a beating

Investors bailed out of tech and blue-chip stocks Friday as the Nasdaq composite fell 79 points to 3,835.01. The Dow Jones industrial average lopped off 160 points to close at 10,927.00.

The steep losses came in the wake of earnings reports from the likes of Oracle and Red Hat. Even though both companies topped analysts' estimates, investors weren't impressed.

"You are going to see earnings come in a little bit softer than expected for the multi-nationals,'' said Larry Rice, chief investment officer at Josephthal Lyon & Ross. "You are going to see the cost of energy, labor, benefits -- all that -- cutting into the bottom line."

Oracle (ORCL) fell $6.63 to $78.31 after several analysts complained about disappointing applications sales in its first quarter. Sun Microsystems (SUNW) lost $4.44 to $113.06 and Microsoft (MSFT) ended down $1.63 to $64.19.

Red Hat (RHAT) shed $4.06 to $21.19 as analysts weren't entirely thrilled with its latest quarterly results.

Among widely held PC stocks, Dell (DELL) fell 88 cents to $35.75; Compaq (CPQ) trimmed 94 cents to $30.19; Apple Computer (AAPL) dropped $1.63 to $55.23 and Gateway (GTW) closed off $1.24 to $59.48.

Anadigics (Nasdaq: ANAD) slid $4.88 to $25 after it warned investors that its third- and fourth-quarter results will fall short of previous predictions.

PSINet (Nasdaq: PSIX) lost $2.69 to $11.75 after it said second half sales would be between $920 million and $960 million and warned that it would need around $600 million in additional funding in 2001.

Yahoo! (YHOO) chopped off $1.06 to $105.88. America Online (AOL) dipped 69 cents to $55.31. eBay (EBAY) closed unchanged at $68.44 and Amazon.com (AMZN) closed off $1.25 to $43.63.

Internet domain name registrar Register.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: RCOM) lost 25 cents to $8.56 after announcing it will buy Afternic.com, a provider of domain name resale services for 4.38 million shares of common stock and $10 million in cash.

CMGI's (Nasdaq: CMGI) closed off $2.38 to $37.75 after it said its AltaVista division is laying off 25 percent of its work force, but company officials said the North American unit should be profitable by January of 2001.

Osicom Technologies Inc. (Nasdaq: FIBR) fell $4.75 to $35.25 after announcing its second quarter results.

Intel (INTC) slid $2.13 to $57.50 while Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and IBM (IBM) closed off 50 cents and $2.06 a share, respectively.