MARKET CLOSE: Stocks little changed ahead of election decision

Technology stocks seesawed throughout most of Friday's trading as the Nasdaq composite closed off 5 points to 3,027.15. The Dow Jones industrial average closed off 26 points to 10,629.87.

Stocks moved higher for a short spat after it appeared that George W. Bush would likely be declared the winner of the much-contested presidential election.

However, the prospects of more legal challenges in the next few days derailed the rally.

"The Bush rally was good for about 10 minutes, but there's still some pressure from some of these tech stocks," said Scott Curtis, trader at Kaufman Brothers. "The market rallied only because of Bush; the weight of the market is still pressuring equities to the downside."

Microsoft (MSFT) shares gained 13 cents to $69.06. Oracle (ORCL) picked up $1.44 to $28.81 and Sun Microsystems (SUNW) shot up $2.06 to $89.31.

Verisign (Nasdaq: VRSN) fell $4.19 to $113.75 while Register.com (Nasdaq: RCOM) lost 25 cents to $7.63 after the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) ruled how many new top-level domain names should be created.

BellSouth Corp. (NYSE: BLS) shed $7.13 to $42.13 after it said the expansion of its high-speed Internet business and its Latin American wireless operations would slow profit growth.

Yahoo! (YHOO) lost $1.69 to $51.25. America Online (AOL) added 71 cents to $49.56 while Amazon.com (AMZN) and CMGI (CMGI) lost 38 cents and 56 cents a share, respectively. eBay (EBAY) gained 56 cents to $43.44.

Internet retailer Outpost.com (Nasdaq: COOL) trimmed 13 cents to $1.94 after announcing that Robert Bowman has resigned as Chief Executive and will be replaced by current CFO Katherine Vick.

According to an analyst at Robertson Stephens, CheckFree's (Nasdaq: CKFR), up $2.06 to $56.63, domination of electronic bill payment and presentment market will be stronger as competition wanes.

Among widely held PC stocks, Dell (DELL) closed unchanged at $24.94; Gateway (GTW) added 60 cents to $39.73; Compaq (CPQ) lost 50 cents to $25 and Apple Computer (AAPL) closed off 50 cents to $18.50.

Intel (INTC) moved up $1.50 to $41.50. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) was unchanged at $20.56 and IBM (IBM) picked up $3.69 to $101.94.