MARKET CLOSE: Dow, techs slip

Technology stocks lost a little bit of ground Friday in languid trading as the Nasdaq composite fell 11 points to 3,930.27. The Dow Jones industrial average closed off 9 points to 11,046.48.

Investors are clearly preoccupied by next week's Federal Reserve Board meeting.

"We've have had pretty good advance ahead of the meeting, and I think maybe some investors are taking some chips off the table ahead of the Fed meeting," said Guy Truicko, portfolio manager at Unity Management.

Sun Microsystems (SUNW) rose 2 15/16 to a 52-week high of 122 3/8 after setting a 2-for-1 stock split. Oracle (ORCL) shares fell 2 5/8 to 81 5/16 and Microsoft (MSFT) lost 9/16 to 71.

Among widely held PC stocks, Dell (DELL) shaved off 3/8 to 38 3/4; Compaq (CPQ) inched up 3/16 to 33 3/16; Apple Computer (AAPL) closed off 1 7/16 to 50 and Gateway (GTW) closed off 5/16 to 63 3/8.

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (Nasdaq: AMD) picked up 2 1/2 to 70 5/8 after announcing it is close to shipping a 1.2GHz version of its Athlon microprocessor, as its most senior executive said the company's product rollout plans are running ahead of schedule. Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) rose 11/16 to 70 3/4 after positive comments from Merrill Lynch on chip stocks.

Yahoo! (YHOO) shares fell 5 15/16 to 125 3/16. America Online (AOL) clipped 3/16 to 55 while eBay (EBAY) and Lycos (LCOS) closed off 8 1/16 and 1/4 a share, respectively. Amazon.com (AMZN) finished up 3/4 to 39.

Cisco Systems (CSCO) picked up 1/16 to 63 1/2. Nortel Networks (NT) ended up 3/8 to 82 3/8 and Lucent Technologies (LU) finished off 3/4 to 43 1/8.