TECH STOCKS: Sell-Off Sends Markets LowerTECH STOCKS: Sell-Off Sends Markets Lower

Stocks took a tumble across the board Thursday with our information 100 index and the Nasdaq falling particularly hard because of a late sell-off of tech stocks. The Dow industrials, which reached a 32-month high earlier in the day, dropped into the red shortly before trading ended for the day.

Semiconductor stocks were among the day's losers--led by Intel, which fell 71 cents, or 2.34%, to $29.89. Intuit saw its price plunge $3.95, or 8% to $45.24 after the maker of personal-finance software said that third-quarter net income would fall below expectations. IBM and Microsoft stock were each off less than 1%. The Nasdaq-100 tracking stock closed at $37.08, down 47 cents, on moderate trading volume of more than 85 million shares.

Solid earnings growth reported by Wal-Mart and a drop of 24,000 in the number of new unemployment claims filed last week to 344,000 temporarily buoyed the Dow, which got as high as 10,753.63 before it fell back.

Our information 100 index fell 6.16 points or 1.8% to close at 332.58, while the Nasdaq fell 30.51 points or 1.5% to close at 2,045.96. The Dow fell 7.26 points or 0.1% to close at 10,664.73, while the S&P 500 fell 4.76 or 0.4% to finish the day at 1,147.06.