Nokia, WorldCom, Amazon sink tech issues

Nokia, WorldCom and Amazon.com hit technology shares with a triple whammy of growth worries Thursday as the Nasdaq fell nearly 3 percent at midday. The Dow Jones industrial average posted slight gains.

Near midday, the Dow was up 40 points to 10,556.78 and the Nasdaq slumped 117 points to 3,870.

On the New York Stock Exchange, Nokia (NYSE: NOK) was the most active stock. Nokia's second quarter earnings were on target, but the company warned that the third quarter would be a bit below expectations. Investors sent shares down 13 5/16 to 42 1/2, or 23 percent. Motorola (NYSE: MOT) fell 2 9/16 to 34 1/16 and Ericsson (Nasdaq: ERICY) lost 1 1/2 to 18 7/8. Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN), which makes wireless chips, was off 6 3/16 to 57 13/16. Atmel (Nasdaq: ATML), which provides flash memory for wireless devices, lost 14 percent to 29.

On the Nasdaq, WorldCom (Nasdaq: WCOM) was the most active stock, falling 12 percent after the company met estimates for the second quarter, but fell short of some sales projections. Shares were off 5 7/16 to 39 5/16. WorldCom said it is comfortable with the consensus Wall Street earnings forecasts for 2000 and 2001.

Next up on the Nasdaq hit list was Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN), which topped estimates but served up disappointing sales growth. Meanwhile, a herd of analysts jumped off the Amazon bandwagon with downgrades. Shares fell 5 9/16 to 30 1/2.

Not to be outdone by Amazon's slide, Infospace fell 11 7/16 to 35 7/8, or 24 percent, after paying a big premium to acquire Go2Net (Nasdaq: GNET), which was up 1 13/16 to 62 3/8.

Among other story stocks Thursday, Symantec (Nasdaq: SYMC) plunged 18 percent to 52 after acquiring Axent Technology (Nasdaq: AXNT), up 31 percent to 25, for $975 million in stock.