Preopen Trading: Sun Continues to Remain Behind the Clouds in Early Action

Early risers were thrashing Sun Microsystems (SUNW), the Unix server maker and tech bellwether, which said last night it would fall far short of the market's expectations for earnings and revenue for the third quarter. In early action, the stock was down $2.19 to $18.63, a 10.5% loss, on electronic trading network Instinet.

Sun said fiscal third-quarter earnings would be about half what was earlier expected -- 7 cents to 9 cents -- rather than the 15 cents expected by the 18-broker First Call/Thomson Financial consensus. The company also expects earnings growth of 10% to 13%, rather than the anticipated 30%, for the quarter, which ends March 31.

Continuing to lose ground this morning was BEA Systems (BEAS), down $6.19 to $35.75, or 15%, after falling sharply in postclose trading yesterday. The applications server company, which provides infrastructure software to e-commerce (not a happy place right now), beat Wall Street's estimates by a penny but are still getting slammed.

EMC (EMC) was also lower after trimming in stealth fashion its revenue guidance and saying its 2001 revenue goal was now a "best-case" scenario. The stock, which ended down sharply yesterday, was lately down another $2.35 to $38. Other losers included storage name Veritas (VRTS), down 9.7%, and Qualcomm (QCOM), down 6%.

Of late, the S&P 500 futures were traded at 1255.10, down 2.4 points, but about a half point below fair value , indicating little direction at today's open. The Nasdaq 100 futures were down 22.5 points to 2029, about 10 points below fair value, indicating a slightly negative bias for those stocks at the open. Fair value is a measure of the correct relationship between futures and the cash index and helps determine what direction stocks may be headed at the start of the day's trading.

The crisis in Turkey continued to take its toll on that country's currency, although its stock market recovered somewhat in trading today. Lately the ISE National-100, Turkey's leading stock index, was up 153.91 to 8044.31.

European markets were trending weaker in the middle of their sessions. London's FTSE was lately down 41.9 to 5961.2; Paris' CAC-40 lost 28.46 to 5424 and Frankfurt's Xetra Dax was lately down 9.27 to 6268.

Asian markets were strong today, with Hong Kong's Hang Seng gaining 181.92 to 15,280.56, and Tokyo's Nikkei 225 finished strong, gaining 172.64 to 13,246.

For more on the world stock markets, check out TheStreet.com's global indices information.

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For more on off-hours trading, see Thursday's Night Watch.

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