Skip navigation
Newswire

U.S. blue chips wobble, techs slump on Oracle

(Updates to early morning)

NEW YORK, March 19 (Reuters) - Blue chips seesawed near unchanged on Wednesday as investors girded for a U.S.-led war on Iraq that may start in hours, but technology shares fell on disappointing sales from software maker Oracle Corp. .

War appears imminent after U.S. President George W. Bush said his forces will invade if Iraqi President Saddam Hussein does not flee by early Thursday. Saddam has vowed to stay and fight, and tens of thousands of U.S. and British troops are in the desert in northern Kuwait preparing to attack.

Oracle, the world's No. 2 software maker, skidded 6 percent, raising worries about the corporate outlook with war around the corner and the U.S. economic rebound looking sluggish. Oracle's key software sales fell short of expectations, and the company offered a tepid outlook.

"On the corporate front, we are not getting any feathers for the bull's cap today," said Bryan Piskorowski, market commentator at Prudential Securities.

The broad Standard and Poor's 500 index edged up 3 points, or 0.40 percent, to 869. The tech-laced Nasdaq Composite Index lost 6 points, or 0.43 percent, to 1,394. The blue-chip Dow Jones industrial average was up 28 points, or 0.35 percent, to 8,221.

Market watchers warn the session may be volatile as investors try to determine how the mounting crisis will end. The Dow has surged more than 8 percent in the last week on hopes for a short war, but worries remain about risks such as Iraq setting oil wells afire, terror attacks or a U.S. invasion getting bogged down.

Oracle skidded 77 cents to $11.48 and dragged on the business software sector. Oracle warned quarterly revenues may be down 6 percent to up 2 percent due to the war threat and rising energy prices.

The Goldman Sachs software index lost 2.34 percent. PeopleSoft Inc. sank $1.25, or almost 7 percent, to $17. Siebel Systems Inc. fell 60 cents, or 6 percent, to $8.71. BEA Systems Inc. dropped 56 cents, or almost 5 percent, to $11.35.