Dow off 23;
Nasdaq hits record

NEW YORK -- Stocks finished mostly lower today, except for a rally in technology and Internet shares that lifted the Nasdaq composite index to its seventh consecutive record high.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 23.43 to close at 9,619.89. While down from Friday's record high of 9,643.32, the blue-chip index did rebound from a 110-point loss earlier this afternoon.

While most broad-market indexes were lower, the Nasdaq composite rose today, fueled by sharp gains in technology stocks, including Intel and Dell Computer, and Internet shares, like Amazon.com, Yahoo! and Infoseek.

"It just gets more incredible every day," Barry Hyman, senior equity analyst at Ehrenkrantz King Nussbaum.

Decliners led advancers by a 7-to-4 margin on the New York Stock Exchange, with 1,112 up, 1,971 down and 506 unchanged. NYSE volume was 810.73 million shares vs. 934.01 million yesterday.

The Standard & Poor's 500 fell 11.21 at 1,263.88, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index rose 40.18 at 2,384.59. The NYSE composite index fell 7.02 at 604.04, and the American Stock Exchange composite index lost 0.44 at 707.32. The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies rose 1.90 at 433.13.

The price of the Treasury's main 30-year bond was down 7/16 point, or $4.371/2 per $1,000 in face value, by late afternoon, while its yield rose to 5.30 percent from 5.27 percent late Friday.

Japan's Nikkei stock average fell 0.17 percent, Germany's DAX index dropped 1.9 percent, and Britain's FT-SE 100 fell 1 percent.