The Dow's 3 Biggest Losers

It was a fairly volatile day in the markets, but the Dow Jones Industrial Average (INDEX: ^DJI  ) fought back after dropping nearly 100 points to end the day flat and preserve yesterday's 337-point gain.

A larger-than-expected $650 billion loan deal buoying some 500 European banks helped take the sour taste out of investors' mouths after Oracle reported its first earnings miss in a decade and lowered guidance. Naturally, the biggest losers today were all tech companies, save United Technologies (NYSE: UTX  ) , which was down 1% on no news.

As investors worried that Oracle's quarterly report wasn't a one-off, IBM (NYSE: IBM  ) led the decline down 3.1%, followed by Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO  ) , down 2.6%, and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ  ) , down 1.8%. Without Big Blue dragging on it, the Dow would have closed up 50 points.

Looking outside the Dow, the Nasdaq fared the worst, dropping 1%, while the S&P 500 (INDEX: ^GSPC  ) was the top performer of the trio with a measly 0.2% gain. It wasn't all bad earnings news today, though, as clothing and lifestyle impresario Nike (NYSE: NKE  ) was up 2.9% after beating analysts' earnings estimates by $0.03 a share.

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