MARKET PREVIEW: Techs await earnings

Techs will be watching for more profit warnings Monday as the Street prepares to kick off earnings season later in the week. Asian and European markets fell back, and the Dow is set to open slightly lower.

U.S.

As the Street revs up for earnings from Yahoo!, Motorola and Gateway later in the week, investors will be on guard for more profit warnings. Volume may be low Monday due to Yom Kippur and the Columbus Day holiday.

Expect the following stocks to be on the move Monday: Interspeed, Emulex and EDS.

Late Friday the Navy awarded a $6.94 billion contract to Electronic Data Systems (NYSE: EDS) to build and maintain a department-wide Navy-Marine Corps Intranet.

Applied Materials (Nasdaq: AMAT), maker of equipment used by chip manufacturers, could also be active Monday after that the Justice Department has begun an investigation of its licensing practices. The company said the investigation is not a broad-based review of its business practices.

Tech stocks ended this week the same they closed out the previous one -- going backwards. The tech-saturated Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 111.06 to 3,361.04. The S&P 500 slid 27.29 to 1,408.99. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 128.38 to 10,596.54.

At the Bell

The Dow Jones industrial average may open about 3.7 points lower. The Standard & Poor's 500 index for June futures contracts was up 0.5 to 1426 at 7:31 a.m. EST in 24-hour electronic trading.

The Inter@ctive Week @Net Index was down 17 to 467.54.

Asia

Trading in Asia was on a downswing. The Nikkei 225 fell 0.65 percent to 15, 994.24, Singapore's Strait Times index shed 3.86 percent to 1,887.18 and Hong Kong's Hang Seng was down 3.03 percent to 15,693.50.

Europe

European markets were falling. London's FTSE 100 fell 1.30 percent to 6,308.00. The CAC 40 in Paris slipped 1.53 percent to 6,162.43 and the DAX in Frankfurt was down 1.07 percent to 6,703.56 at 7:12 a.m. EST.

Reuters contributed to this report.