MIDDAY MARKETS: More tech warnings

Another batch of warnings depressed techs at midday Tuesday. The Nasdaq shed 54.60 to 3,300.96. while the Dow Jones industrial average gained 11.83 to 10,580.26.

The Inter@ctive Week @Net Index fell 5 to 467.71.

Altera Corp. (Nasdaq: ALTR), down 12 to 28.88, and Xilinx Inc. (Nasdaq: XLNX), down 23.13 to 56, crumbled Tuesday on concerns that the market for general purpose semiconductor chips is waning. Salomon Smith Barney and Lehman Brothers both cut their ratings on the stocks Tuesday.

IBM (NYSE: IBM), down 2.38 to 115.56, will make capital investments worth $5 billion to support its semiconductor business around the world, expanding facilities in Vermont and Japan, and building a new chip-making plant in New York.

PanAmSat Corp. (Nasdaq: SPOT), down 0.69 to 28.44, said third quarter earnings were 6 cents a share, a penny less that First Call Corp.'s expectations, and much lower than the 23 cent-per-share profit the company reported for the same period in 1999.

Open Market, Inc. (Nasdaq: OMKT), down 0.69 to 3.25, said Tuesday that it expects third quarter earnings to miss estimates. The company also announced plans to restructure, laying off 150 workers, and attempting to bring it to profitability by the second half of 2001.

An affiliate company of Deutsche Bank Alex Brown has made a $1.02 billion offer for National Discount Brokers Group Inc. (NYSE: NDB), up 21.63 to 46.88, the firm said Tuesday.

Software maker Daleen Technologies Inc. (Nasdaq: DALN), up 0.75 to 10.50, said its third-quarter revenue should exceed analysts' forecasts and its loss should be lower than had been expected as it continues to expand its customer base among telecommunications service providers.

BMG Entertainment, which represents artists including Carly Simon and Christina Aguilera, will sell digital downloads of songs and albums from its catalog through a number of online sites, the company said Tuesday.

Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) rose 0.53 to 30.59, AOL (NYSE: AOL) gained 0.97 to 58.07 and Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) fell 1.38 to 84.38.

Among other leading tech issues: Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) dropped 0.31 to 53.38, Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) tumbled 0.69 to 38.38, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) rose 0.44 to 54.63, and Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) shed 2.03 to 64.72.