MIDDAY MARKETS: More warnings crush techs

Another round of warnings put downward pressure on techs at midday Friday. The Nasdaq tumbled 71.05 to 4,027.30 and the Dow Jones industrial average shed 51.80 to 11,208.07.

The Inter@ctive Week @Net Index fell 11 to 533.06.

National Discount Brokers Group, Inc.(NYSE: NDB), down 7.75 to 28.06, or 23 percent, warned that it expects to report a loss for the upcoming quarter, reversing the the Street's projection for a profit of 9 cents per share.

Kulicke & Soffa (Nasdaq: KLIC) dropped 1.44 to 15.63 after the company's CEO told investors that its September quarter would dip sequentially.

Mpower Communications Corp. (Nasdaq: MPWR), down 3.4 to 8.91, or 28 percent, after it announced revised forecasts for the remainder of the year, and a charge of up to $13 million to reorganize its business.

Scient (Nasdaq: SCNT) saw some positive news; the stock was up 4.75 to 25.5 after an upgrade from William Blair helped convince the markets it shouldn't be lumped in with other crumbling Internet consultants. Viant (Nasdaq: VIAN) fell 0.31 to 7.56 and iXL (Nasdaq: IIXL) was down 0.03 to 6.41.

Teen site iTurf (Nasdaq: TURF), up 0.19 to 1.94 managed to best analysts' estimates for the second quarter, posting a narrower-than-expected loss, pushed partially by increased ad sales.

Dot-com layoffs aren't just a U.S. trend. Asiacontent.com (Nasdaq: IASIA), down 0.25 to 3.75, said Friday that it was letting go of 50 workers in its eight Asia-Pacific offices.

Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) fell 4.94 to 102, Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) fell 0.81 to 42.69 and AOL (NYSE: AOL) dropped 0.40 to 55.56.

Among other leading tech issues: Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) shed 0.06 to 70.13, Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) dropped 1.75 to 64.5 and Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) shed 3.31 to 87.88.