Tech Shows Some Follow-Through on Tuesday's Selloff

There's no panic selling in the sector.

Author:: David Shabelman
Publish date:: Mar 24, 1999 11:28 AM EST

SAN FRANCISCO -- Was it destined to be a rare extravaganza, like the

Academy Awards

? Or a rerun, like

CNBC's

coverage of

Dow

10,000 last week?

So far, there has been some follow-through to the downside from Tuesday's sharp tech selloff, but no panic selling. And perhaps one reason for that is there was no particular trigger for Tuesday's losses. Yes, there are some earnings concerns, particularly with PC companies, but the weakness appeared to be more momentum-driven Tuesday, with traders looking to book profits in case something more was going on. The market will be watching to see how things shake out in Serbia as well.

Shares of

3Com

(COMS)

are marginally higher after the company announced earnings that met lowered expectations after the close Tuesday. 3Com was trading 9/16 higher, or 2%, at 24 3/16.

RealNetworks

(RNWK) - Get Report

continues to slide and was one of the leading point losers on the

Nasdaq

early on. It was trading 8 3/8 lower, or 7%, at 109 5/8 after dropping 17 points Tuesday. RealNetworks might be suffering from uncertainty over how it would be affected by the rumored

Yahoo!

(YHOO)

broadcast.com

(BCST)

merger. There may also be disappointment that the company did not announce a split earlier in the week. But to put things in perspective, the stock was trading around 70 at the beginning of March.

Shares of

Network Solutions

(NSOL)

spiked at the open but have been trading lower since then. The stock split 2-for-1 as of today's session and could be seeing profit-taking from daytraders who helped run up the stock ahead of the split. It was trading 3 13/16 lower, or 3%, at 112.

Blodget Covers the Net

Newly named

Merrill Lynch

Internet analyst Henry Blodget weighed in this morning by starting coverage of several Internet stocks, including

Infoseek

(SEEK)

with a near-term accumulate and long-term buy;

Lycos

(LCOS)

with a near- and long-term accumulate; and

uBid

(UBID)

with a near-term accumulate and long-term buy.

Blodget's comments appeared to have little impact on the stocks' movement. Lycos was trading 3 1/2 higher at 90, but uBid was down 1 at 78 and Infoseek was 3/8 lower at 71 1/8.