MARKET PREVIEW: Can Yahoo! comfort techs?

As techs come out of a tailspin Wednesday, the sight of Yahoo! earnings on deck is bound to help them regain balance. Asian and European markets moved down, and the Dow is set to open slightly lower.

U.S.

Volume hit a record 2.8 billion Tuesday as investors bailed out of technology stocks. Though headlines screamed that the tech bubble had burst, but a late-day wave of buying brought the index back up again. After being down 13 percent at one point in the early afternoon, the Nasdaq recovered to close above 4,000.

Earnings news from portal Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO), one of the few Internet companies to buck Tuesday's decline, may bring back some stability in the sector. The results, due out after the bell, are expected to show Yahoo! earned 9 cents a share in its first quarter, up from 3 cents a share a year earlier.

On the IPO front, SS7 signaling software systems vendor Ulticom (Nasdaq: ULCM) priced at $13 and wireless broadband systems firm, Vyyo (Nasdaq: VYYO), priced in the middle of its range at $13.50 a share.

Expect the following technology stocks to be among Wednesday's most actively traded issues: Liberty Digital, Microchip Technology, Oracle, 3Com and Yahoo!.

Tuesday's trading would have made Charles Dickens proud as the Nasdaq composite lost more than 570 points in early trading before recouping most of its losses in the last two hours of trading to close off a rather benign 75 points to 4,148.90.

At the Bell

The Dow Jones industrial average may open about 33 points lower. The Standard & Poor's 500 index for June futures contracts was down 4.2 points to 1470 at 7:31 a.m. EST in 24-hour electronic trading.

The Inter@ctive Week @Net Index was up 2 to 571.79.

Asia

Trading in Asia was mixed. The Nikkei 225 lost 0.64 percent to 20,462, Singapore's Strait Times index slipped 0.16 percent to 2055 and Hong Kong's Hang Seng was down 3.40 percent to 16,318.

Europe

European markets were also moving down. London's FTSE 100 was flat at 6427. The CAC 40 in Paris lost 4.30 percent to 5,954 and the Xetra DAX in Frankfurt was down 3.70 percent to 7,224 at 7:11 a.m. EST.

Reuters contributed to this report.