MIDDAY MARKETS: Profit warning carnage continues

Another round of profit warnings was keeping most techs in the red at midday Thursday. The Nasdaq turned around morning losses to gain 6.74 to 3,869.84 and the Dow Jones industrial average shed 39.87 to 10,443.73.

The Inter@ctive Week @Net Index fell 6 to 483.93.

New Era of Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: NEON) was one of the few companies predicting an upside surprise for its second quarter -- shares jumped 2 13/16 to 41 7/8 after the company said it anticipates anticipates revenue of about $50 million for the quarter ended June 30.

CapRock Communications Corp. (Nasdaq: CPRK), down 5 7/8 to 12 1/16, said it will suffer an unforeseen loss in its second quarter due to the absence of an anticipated $30 million contract for the sale of dark fiber.

Compaq Computer Corp. (NYSE: CPQ), down 5/16 to 24 11/16 and IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) will work together on storage networking products, agreeing to sell each others products and make their combined hardware and software interoperable.

IBM, down 3 1/2 to 101 1/2, extended Wednesday's slide as Bear Stearns cut its second-quarter earnings estimates to 97 cents a share from the $1.02 a share previously forecast. Two companies that warned Wednesday -- Computer Associates (NYSE: CA), up 9/16 to 30, and BMC Software (Nasdaq: BMCS), even at 4 1/2 -- had blamed some of their problems on weakness in mainframe sales, one of IBM's big revenue sources.

Visual Networks (Nasdaq: VNWK), fell 14 11/16 to 11 9/16, or 56 percent, becoming the latest technology issue to tank after warning its second quarter will be worse than expected.

Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) fell 1/2 to 120 5/16, Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) dropped 15/16 to 35 9/16 and AOL (NYSE: AOL) rose 1/2 to 55 1/16.

Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) rose 2 to 133 5/8. Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) fell 1 to 74 1/4, Silicon Storage Technology (Nasdaq: SSTI) fell 7 5/8 to 76 5/16, and National Semiconductor (NYSE: NSM) dropped 1 15/16 to 48 1/8.

Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) was up 1 to 79 1/2.

Among other leading tech issues: Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) lost 5/16 to 61 9/16, Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) fell 2 7/8 to 83 5/8 and Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) rose 1 5/8 to 73 15/16.