Tech stocks continue slide

Technology stocks continued their slide Wednesday as continuing fears surrounding Asian markets pushed the Dow Jones industrial average down 70.62 points to 7979.04 and the NASDAQ fell 23.93 points to 1596.62.

Oracle Corp. was again the most heavily traded issue with more than 64 million shares changing hands. Oracle closed up 50 cents per share to $23.44, but this hardly inspired confidence Tuesday's 29-percent collapse.

"You'd certainly expect people to come back in at such a low price, but that wasn't the case," said Rick Sherlund, an analyst at Goldman Sachs. "Investors aren't sure about this market for a lot of reasons."

Not surprisingly, chip makers and PC vendors endured another rough day of trading. Intel Corp. slid $1.13 per share to $74.50 while Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and IBM fell $1.06 and $3.38 per share, respectively.

Dell Computer Corp. lost $3.06 per share and Compaq Computer Corp. trimmed $3.44 per share after International Data Corp. reported that worldwide PC sales appear to be slowing and will continue to decline for the next year. Gateway 2000 Inc. was off $1.13 per share to $30.88 and Apple shed 50 cents per share to $14.75.

Networking stocks took a hit, too, as Cisco Systems Inc., 3Com Corp., and Ascend Communications Inc. all were losers. Bay Networks Inc. fell $2.25 per share to $25.31 after several brokerage firms lowered the stock's rating.

Lycos Inc., which had made big gains in the past three days of trading, came back to reality, losing 84 cents per share to $34. Yahoo! Inc. shares sank 54 cents to $58.75 and Excite Inc. was off 94 cents per share to $24.50.