Abreast of the market: H-P earnings lead tech issues to losses on 7th-most-active day
NEW YORK -- Yesterday's plunge in the stock market, which left some of the market's best-known names with steep losses, came on the seventh-highest volume in New York Stock Exchange history.</br></br>The Dow Jones Industrial Average sank 83.11, or 1.48%, to 5520.54. At its low for the session, the average had given up 133 points, its steepest decline on a point basis since March 8, when the industrials fell by as much as 225 points intraday.</br></br>Hewlett-Packard plunged 10 5/8 to 78 3/8, a loss of nearly 12%, on the fallout from the computer maker's announcement late Wednesday that its fiscal third-quarter results would suffer because of slower-than-expected order growth.</br></br>Coming just a day after shares of Motorola sank 13%, the earnings woes left blue-chip technology stocks, and the rest of the market, badly bruised. Motorola on Tuesday said its results were worse than Wall Street was expecting.</br></br>Intel lost 3 3/8 to 69 1/2, Microsoft dropped 5 to 114 1/2, Computer Associates fell 3 1/4 to 65 1/4, and Cisco Systems sank 3 1/8 to 54 3/4.