MIDDAY MARKETS: Triple whammy hits techs

Yahoo!, Motorola and Lucent gave techs a triple-whammy of bad news Wednesday. The Nasdaq tumbled 69.90 to 3,170.64 and the Dow Jones industrial average shed 92.86 to 10,431.54.

The Inter@ctive Week @Net Index fell 22 to 433.73.

Yahoo's (Nasdaq: YHOO) third quarter results just snuck by expectations, and weren't enough to ease investors' fears the company is being affected by the dot-com slow down. Shares fell 16.31 to 66.38, or 20 percent, early Wednesday. AOL (NYSE: AOL) shed 3.67 to 53.58 and Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) fell 2.19 to 28.25.

Lucent Telecommunications (NYSE: LU) shares plunged 9.69 to 21.69, or 31 percent, after the company issued a second warning about its fourth quarter.

Pessimistic news from Motorola (NYSE: MOT), down 4.13 to 22.13, sent telecom stocks tumbling in morning trading Wednesday, as investors expressed concern over the sector's near-term future. Nokia Corp. (Nasdaq: NOK) slipped 2.68 to 32.31, and Ericsson (Nasdaq: ERICY) fell 0.31 to 13.81.

Fiber optic firm Global Crossing (Nasdaq: GBLX), down 3.5 to 20.38, said CEO Leo Hindery has left. He will be replaced by Vice Chairman Thomas Casey.

A bright spot on the Nasdaq, CSG Systems (Nasdaq: CSGS) was up 14 to 41.94, or 50 percent Wednesday after AT&T Broadband has agreed to dismiss its Sept. 27 demand for arbitration with the company.

Among other leading tech issues: Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) dropped 0.94 to 50.19, Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) fell 1.23 to 36.13, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) was up 0.37 to 54.94, and Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) rose 1.38 to 63.25.