Technology stocks led the market lower yesterday as a weak profit report from a leading software company fanned worries about how well US companies will weather the economic turmoil in Asia. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 61.18 points to 8,049.66 despite nearly erasing an 85-point slide in the morning.

Broad-market indicators also pulled back again after a part midday recovery. The technology-laden Nasdaq composite index suffered the heaviest damage, falling nearly 2 per cent as investors were hit by the latest profit report from Oracle, released after Monday's close.

Oracle's stock price tumbled by nearly a third, setting a one-day volume record with more than 170 million shares traded, after the database software company reported a quarterly profit well below analyst expectations.