MIDDAY MARKETS: Greenspan''s warning sinks in

Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan's ominous words about interest rates sunk in at midday Wednesday, and techs gave up their initial celebration of the Fed's half-point rate hike. The Nasdaq shed 95.19 to 3,622.38, or 3.31 percent and the Dow Jones industrial average lost 167.23 to 10,767.34.

The Inter@ctive Week @Net Index dropped 15 to 476.00.

The markets' knee-jerk response to the Federal Reserve's long anticipated half-point rate hike Tuesday to rally. But Greenspan warned that the Fed could continue to hike rates over the summer. The fears hurt techs and the broader markets.

Exceptions were companies reporting good earnings news. Analog Devices (NYSE: ADI) topped expectations with its second-quarter earnings, predicted strong third-quarter results, and raised its revenue estimates for fiscal 2000.

Chinadotcom Corp. (Nasdaq: CHINA), up 2 7/16 to 33 5/16, reported better margins and declining losses for its first quarter, and said it was on the path to profitability.

TD Waterhouse (NYSE: TWE) also rose 1/16 to 18 3/4 after it said quarterly profits more than doubled, beating Wall Street expectations.

Veritas (Nasadaq: VRTS) was up 9 percent, or 9 to 113, on the news that it will develop and co-market products that work on operating machines made by IBM (NYSE: IBM), down 2 5/8 to 106 3/8.

Meanwhile, LSI Logic (NYSE: LSI) fell 2 1/4 to 33 5/16 after announcing it will buy IntraServer Technology for about $70 million.

Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HWP) gave way to the day's trend, losing 10 1/8 to 128 3/8 despite reporting earnings that topped estimates. Its subsidiary Agilent Technologies (NYSE: A) also shed 8 9/16 to 79 15/16 after coming in on target with expectations after Tuesday's bell.

Lycos (Nasdaq: LCOS) was down 7 3/4 to 64 7/8 on news of its merger with Terra Networks (Nasdaq: TRRA), down 4 35/64 to 49 1/64. Analysts downgraded the stocks. Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) shed 13/16 to 134 13/16 America Online Inc. (NYSE: AOL) dropped 1 1/8 to 56 7/8 and Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) lost1 1/8 to 57 15/1.

Other leading techs were also declining; Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) fell 1 7/8 to 67 5/8, Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) dropped 1 61/64 to 48 15/64, Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) was down 15/16 to 120 15/16, Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) lost 2 to 58 9/16 and Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) was off 2 13/16 to 84 13/16.