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MARKET PREVIEW: Can techs turn around?

2 min read

Technology stocks will look to mergers and deals Monday to pull them out of last week's slide. Asian and European markets moved down, and the Dow is set to open slightly lower.

U.S.

After tumbling along with the Dow last week, techs may try to turn around on merger Monday. Several of Monday's deals had yet to be confirmed; the Wall Street Journal reported that competitors NetIQ (Nasdaq: NTIQ) and Mission Critical Software Inc. (Nasdaq: MCSW), which both software used to monitor and administer computer systems, plan to merge in a deal worth about $1.42 billion. Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) and News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) may also have a alliance in the works, according to The New Yorker.

A slew of wireless alliances were also in the works Monday; America Online (NYSE: AOL) said it will develop a version of its Instant Messenger service for Nokia Corp.(NYSE: NOK) wireless devices, and Lucent Technologies (NYSE: LU) said it had a deal with Yahoo! and was working with Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) for instant messaging on wireless end-user devices. Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) also announced users of mobile devices can now shop at its site.

On the economic front, data on January personal income and spending is due; personal income is expected to have risen 0.7 percent, compared to a 0.3 percent gain in December, while spending is seen up 0.4 percent, compared with 0.8 percent the previous month.

Expect the following technology stocks to be among Monday's most actively traded issues: eBay, JDS Uniphase, NetIQ, Nortel Networks and Yahoo!.

Tech stocks trembled Friday afternoon as mixed earnings reports and queasiness about interest rates troubled the market. The Nasdaq Composite Index fell 27.16 to 4,590.49. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 230.51 to 9,862.12 to close below the 10,000 mark for the first time since April 6, 1999.

At the Bell

The Dow Jones industrial average may open about 25 points lower. The Standard & Poor's 500 index for June futures contracts was down 3.4 points to 1334 at 7:39 a.m. EST in 24-hour electronic trading.

The Inter@ctive Week @Net Index was down 14 to 618.57.

Asia

Trading in Asia was mixed. The Nikkei 225 dropped 0.49 percent to 19,720, Singapore's Strait Times index slipped 1.02 percent to 2,118 and Hong Kong's Hang Seng was down 1.26 percent to 16,984.

Europe

European markets were also moving in different directions. London's FTSE 100 lost 1.05 percent to 6,133. The CAC 40 in Paris dropped 1.71 percent to 6,083 and the Xetra DAX in Frankfurt was down 2.50 percent to 7,545 at 6:59 a.m. EST.

Reuters contributed to this report.