MARKET CLOSE: Profit warnings drag techs lower

Technology stocks took it on the chin Monday after a few profit warnings hit the wire. The Nasdaq composite closed off 107 points to 3,767.88 while the Dow Jones industrial average slipped 50 points to end at 10,564.21.

"It's a pretty self-explanatory day here. Nasdaq is down the worst after being up for two weeks," said Arthur Hogan, chief market analyst at Jefferies & Co. "We have a couple pre-announcements. Away from that we're in relatively good shape all things considered. We've got some very important economic data coming but unfortunately not until Wednesday and Thursday."

Citrix Systems (Nasdaq: CTXS) plunged 18 15/16, or 46 percent, to 22 1/4 after the company issued a profit warning for its second quarter.

Microsoft (MSFT) shed 1 7/8 to 66 15/16. Oracle (ORCL) fell 2 3/16 to 52 9/16 and Sun Microsystems (SUNW) closed up 7/16 to 90 3/8.

iBasis (Nasdaq: IBAS) moved up 7 15/32 to 32 27/32 after announcing an agreement, with China Mobile to route international voice and fax traffic from its 46 million customers over the iBasis Network.

Among widely held PC stocks, Dell (DELL) fell 3/16 to 44 7/8; Compaq (CPQ) lost 1/2 to 26; Apple Computer (AAPL) lopped off 4 9/16 to 91 3/16 and Gateway (GTW) closed off 2 to 54 5/16.

Online marketing firm Engage Inc. (Nasdaq: ENGA) dropped 1 9/16 to 16 15/16 after announcing it will buy MediaBridge Technologies Inc. in a $268.25 million deal. Engage is a majority-owned unit of Internet incubator CMGI Inc. (Nasdaq: CMGI), down 4 9/16 to 56 1/2.

Compuware Corp. (Nasdaq: CPWR) closed off 3/4 to 13 1/16 after it was downgraded to "neutral'' from "buy" by analyst Rehan Syed at SG Cowen.

Yahoo! (YHOO) shed 5 13/16 to 137 3/8 while Amazon.com (AMZN) and America Online (AOL) closed off 3 3/4 and 2 3/16 a share, respectively.

Consumers buying cars through online auctioneer eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY), off 6 3/8 to 66 13/16, will now be able to get them inspected, through a deal the company signed with car-maker Saturn Corp.

Intel INTC) shaved off 1 7/8 to 125 3/16. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) lost 3 to 85 3/4 and IBM (IBM) closed down 11/16 to 119.

Corning (GLW) closed up 19 to a 52-week high of 231 after the company offered an optimistic earnings outlook. SDL (SDLI) rallied up 11 31/32 to 261 31/32 and Scient (SCNT) closed off 4 3/16 to 57 13/16.