Dow falls 158;
Nasdaq off 94

NEW YORK -- Investors sold market-leading technology shares for the third session in a row, leaving broad indexes sharply lower and the Dow Jones industrial average slightly below where it opened the year. The Dow today fell 158.08 points, or 1.7 percent, to close at 9,133.03.

The Dow closed 1998 at 9,181.43.

The Standard & Poor's 500 fell 27.63, or 2.2 percent, to 1,216.14. The technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index lost 94.13 points, or 3.9 percent, to 2,310.79. It was third worst single-day point drop in Nasdaq history.

The S&P 500 is down 1 percent so far in 1999; while the Nasdaq is up 5.4 percent for the year.

Decliners led advancers today by a 2-to-1 margin on the New York Stock Exchange, with 982 up, 1,997 down and 559 unchanged. NYSE volume was 712.84 million shares vs. 706.88 million yesterday.

The NYSE composite index fell 10.02 to 576.62, and the American Stock Exchange composite index dropped 10.66 to 692.24. The Russell 2000 index lost 8.20 to 403.13

The price of the Treasury's main 30-year bond was up 21/32 point, or $6.56 per $1,000 in face value, by late afternoon, while its yield fell to 5.30 percent from 5.34 percent late yesterday.

Investors took profits in technology shares, which had almost single-handedly led the market higher in recent months, and did not replace them with other stocks, traders said. "The loss of leadership in the technology sector is the most important," said Ricky Harrington, a technical analyst. "The highest expectation should be for a correction."