MARKET PREVIEW: Techs eye Cisco earnings

Earnings will sway techs again Tuesday, with networking equipment giant Cisco slated to report after the bell. Asian markets moved down, Europe moved up, and the Dow is set to open slightly higher.

U.S.

Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO), the world's third largest company by market capitalization, is likely to gain ahead of its fiscal second quarter results. Wall Street is expecting earnings of 24 cents a share excluding goodwill, according to First Call Corp. Barnesandnoble.com (Nasdaq: BNBN) is also slated to report quarterly results.

On the economic front, the government report on fourth quarter productivity is due out, with economists expecting a gain in the quarter of 4.0 percent, compared with 4.9 percent in the third quarter.

A couple of IPOs are also lined up on deck, Internet service provider, Fastnet (Nasdaq: FSST) priced its shares at $12 each, the top of its $10 to $12 range. Buy.com (Nasdaq: BUYX) priced its IPO above a $10 to $12 range at $13 for trading Tuesday.

Expect these stocks to be among Tuesday's most active: Foundry Networks, Jupiter, Network Access Solutions, Novellus Systems, StarMedia and Yahoo!.

Blue-chip stocks plodded through uneven trading Monday but technology stocks, particularly chip and biotech issues, pushed the Nasdaq composite up 76 points to a record close of 4,320.54. The Dow closed off 58 points to 10,905.79.

At the Bell

The Dow Jones industrial average may open about 39 points higher. The Standard & Poor's 500 index for June futures contracts was up 5.1 points to 1432 at 7:38 a.m. EST in 24-hour electronic trading.

The Inter@ctive Week @Net Index was up 8 to 573.80.

Asia

Trading in Asia was on a downswing. The Nikkei 225 fell 0.38 percent to 19,868, Singapore's Strait Times index slipped 0.58 percent to 2,246 and Hong Kong's Hang Seng was up 1.63 percent to 16,229.

Europe

European markets were moving up. London's FTSE 100 gained 2.17 percent to 6,251. The CAC 40 in Paris rose 2.23 percent to 6,342 and the Xetra DAX in Frankfurt was up 2.43 percent to 7,474 at 7:11 a.m. EST.

Reuters contributed to this report.