MIDDAY MARKETS: IPOs are back

A batch of IPO's heralded the onset of fall at midday Thursday, while techs continued to tread water. The Nasdaq tumbled 73.23 to 3,824.21 and the Dow Jones industrial average shed 4.81 to 10,683.11.

The Inter@ctive Week @Net Index fell 9 to 519.79.

IPOs were back from summer vacation; handheld wireless service provider OmniSky (Nasdaq: OMNY) rose 3.88 to 15.88, or 32 percent after it priced its 9.1 million share offering at $12 a share, the top of its $10-12 range Thursday.

TTM Technologies (Nasdaq: TTMI) rose 6.75 to 22.75 in its IPO Thursday. The maker of printed circuit boards had priced its offering of 7.5 million shares at $16, above its range of $13 to $15, for trading Thursday. Zengine (Nasdaq: ZNGN) had yet to move off its $13 opening price.

Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products (Nasdaq: LHSP), the Belgian speech technology company, plunged 29 percent, or 6.25 to 15, after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said it is investigating previous financial statements from the company.

Adaptive Broadband Corp. (Nasdaq: ADAP) ran up 15 percent Thursday after announcing it has signed a five-year, $100 million contract with Fuzion Wireless Communications to purchase AB-Access fixed wireless broadband equipment.

WJ Communications, Inc (Nasdaq: WJCI), up 3.06 to 37.63, said Thursday it had signed a multi-year agreement with Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) to provide outdoor transceiver units, or ODUs, for Cisco's "New World Wireless Network Ecosystem."

Shares of eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) dipped 4.94 to 71.63, or 6 percent, in morning trading, a day after the company told investors its revenue would hit $3 billion by 2005.

PurchasePro.com (Nasdaq: PPRO), up 1.56 to 20.13, has declared a two-for-one stock split, the company said Thursday.

Trimble Navigation Ltd. (Nasdaq: TRMB), down 0.31 to 20.13, will acquire Oregon-based Tripod Data System in a deal worth less than $15 million, the company said Thursday.

Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) rose 1.56 to 39.06, AOL (NYSE: AOL) gained 0.56 to 55.5 and Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) rose 1.21 to 111.

Among other leading tech issues: Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) dropped 1 to 62.13, Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) rose 1.38 to 61.69, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) was up 0.5 to 64.75, Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) shed 1.25 to 78.69 and Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) lost 2 to 117.69.