NEW YORK (Reuters) - Technology stocks look poised to fall at the opening bell on Friday after computer-chip powerhouse Intel Corp. (NasdaqNM:INTC - news) aggravated an already nervous market with a warning on third-quarter revenues. The company's announcement, released after the market closed on Thursday, sent chip and computer shares lower in after-hours trading. Intel shares tumbled nearly 21 percent. ``It's going to be ugly across the board in tech,'' said Daniel Kunstler, analyst at J.P. Morgan. ``You can start with semiconductors and everything from PC makers to enterprise hardware manufacturers will be affected.'' ``The challenge and opportunity for investors will be to sort through this train wreck and right the cars that haven't gotten crashed,'' he said.
The Nasdaq 100 futures index for December lost 92.00 points to 3,673.00
late on Thursday. Selling spread into both the Standard & Poor's 500 and
Dow Jones futures indexes as well. That built on a down day for the technology-laced Nasdaq Composite Index (^IXIC - news), which fell 1.76 percent. The Dow Jones industrial average (^DJI - news) closed up 0.73 percent. Intel, the world's largest maker of computer microchips, said third-quarter revenues would rise just 3 percent to 5 percent from second-quarter revenues of $8.3 billion due to weak demand in Europe. The warning was Intel's first in two years. Intel shares traded at $48-5/8 after the bell compared with a closing price of $61-31/64 on Nasdaq. That is still above the stock's 52-week low of $32-1/2 but off a high of $75-13/16.
Shares of most major chip makers lost ground in after-hours trading on
Instinet and Island ECN, including Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
(NYSE:AMD - news), Micron Technology Inc. (NYSE:MU - news),
Cypress Semiconductor Corp. (NYSE:CY - news) and National Semiconductor Corp. (NYSE:NSM - news).
Bellwether names in other technology sectors were also hit. Dell Computer
Corp. (NasdaqNM:DELL - news) along with Microsoft Corp.
NasdaqNM:MSFT - news), Cisco Systems (NasdaqNM:CSCO - news)
and Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE:HWP - news) all lost ground.
`Similar to what happened in the early part of March, when technology
stocks first began to show some signs of crumbling, you'll probably see a
good amount of money not fleeing the market but moving into more defensive
sectors,'' said Bill Meehan, chief market analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald.
Intel, which trades on the Nasdaq market, is also one of the 30 stocks in the Dow Jones industrial average and could have a dragging effect on that
blue-chip gauge as well.
`Obviously this is not good news. The market is certainly not in shape to
heed any of this type of negative news,'' said Peter Cardillo, director of
research at Westfalia Investments. ''It's another cloud over the earnings
season and obviously the markets will respond in a very negative way, at
least Nasdaq will.''
``It looks like it's going to be a grim Friday,'' Cardillo said.
