MIDDAY MARKETS: Techs shrug warnings

Technology stocks held their gains at midday Friday, despite more disappointing quarterly reports and tepid reception for the approval of the AOL Time Warner deal. The Nasdaq Composite Index rose 24.14 to 2,664.71 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 37.41 to 10,572.14.

The Inter@ctive Week @Net Index rose 1 to 304.29.

Shares of AOL Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: AOL) shed 0.98 to 46.25. The gigantic media merger finally closed late Thursday after one year and one day of wrangling with regulators.

Ariba (Nasdaq: ARBA) fell 7.19 to 36.19 despite an upbeat quarterly report. Many analysts lowered ratings and said ambiguous accounting may hide a slowdown in revenue growth.

Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HWP) slid 1.56 to 30.8125. The company warned of lower-than-expected results and the aftershock led to downgrades in the server sector for Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW), down 1.19 to 30.75 and NCR Corp. (NYSE: NCR), down 4.63 to 44.44. IBM (NYSE: IBM) was up 1.63 to 95.31.

Gateway (NYSE: GTW) was off 1.19 to 21.71. Dell (NYSE: DELL) rose 0.38 to 23.18.

DoubleClick (Nasdaq: DCLK) rose 3.13 to 14.38 after reporting quarterly results and cutting guidance for 2001. Most analysts said the warning was expected, and saw several positives for the company, while one analyst suggested investors forsake the stock in favor of the bond. Engage (Nasdaq: ENGA) rose 0.38 to 1.438.

Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO)lost 0.13 to 39, gained 1.63 to 44.56, Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) shed 0.44 to 32.94, Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) rose 0.47 to 33.78 and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) fell 0.75 to 54.25.

Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) rose 1.13 to 18.13, and Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) gained 0.75 to 26.625.