MARKET CLOSE: Techs fall some more

Technology stocks slid further Wednesday as worries about corporate earnings continued to overshadow the market.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index fell 34.21 points to 1,638.79, while the S&P 500 went down 3.21 to 1,103.25. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 29.71 points to 9,515.42. Inter@ctive Week's @100 Index declined 40.28 to 1,818.60.

Lucent (NYSE: LU) shares slipped in early trading on rumors it might file for bankruptcy, although the company subsequently denied the speculation. Lucent closed Wednesday's regular trading at $6.78, down $1.07 for the session.

Among other heavily traded technology stocks, Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO) dropped 6 cents to $13.69, Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) retreated $2.38 to $22.63, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) slid $1.44 to $51.94 and Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) fell 22 cents to $13.86. EMC (NYSE: EMC) rose $1.75 to $26.95.

Investors received yet another profit warning in the business-to-business sector. Following Tuesday's software landslide, Commerce One (Nasdaq: CMRC), up 39 cents to $6, said Wednesday that it expects to post a loss of 11 cents per share for the quarter.

Commerce One's relatively mild caution helped boost other stocks identified with business-to-business commerce online. Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) gained 23 cents to $23.48. Ariba advanced 38 cents to $4.81. Freemarkets (Nasdaq: FMKT) picked up $1.09 to $7.53.

Rational Software (Nasdaq: RATL) issued a warning on Tuesday evening. The company said its business will improve in the second half of its fiscal year, but that was apparently too far away for analysts, who downgraded the stock Wednesday. Investors on Wednesday drove shares up 50 cents to $14.44, despite the downgrades.

Europe's biggest software group SAP (NYSE: SAP) rose 87 cents to $25.26, and Internet media company Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) gained $1.06 to $12.44 after the companies said they would jointly develop a business portal.

Solectron (NYSE: SLR) fell 23 cents to $16.66. The contract electronics manufacturer late Tuesday said it would cut 750 jobs.

Data analysis software vendor MicroStrategy (Nasdaq: MSTR) dropped 9 cents to $2.88 after warning of larger-than-anticipated first-quarter losses.

ZDII staff and Reuters contributed to this roundup.