MUMBAI, FEBRUARY 12: Even as the Nasdaq stock market of the US dropped by nearly two per cent on Friday, ADRs (American Depository Receipts) of Indian technology firms Infosys Technologies and Satyam Infoway soared to new peaks, setting the pace for another week of bull run on Indian stock markets next week.Satyam ADR zoomed by another $ 24 to $ 98 and Infosys by $ 141 to $ 640. Indian ADRs spurted while other US technology shares lost their footing on profit-taking. At Friday's level, Infosys share is worth Rs 55,808 (one domestic share is equivalent to two ADRs). Infosys closed at Rs 9,962 on the Bombay Stock Exchange on Friday. However, when converted into Indian rupees, one Infosys ADR is equivalent to Rs 27,904. ``This means there is huge gap between the local and overseas prices. With Infosys and Satyam ADRs going up further on the Nasdaq on Friday, Indian technology shares may witness bull run in the coming week,'' said a broker.Infosys has a weightage of around 20 per cent in the Sensex which has already crossed the 6,000 level. Ignoring fundamentals and tight margins, other technology shares are expected to follow the path of Infosys and Satyam, analysts said.NASDAQ DROPS 2 PC: The Nasdaq lost its footing Friday as investors sought to cash out of the high-flying technology stocks and fretted about the compatibility of Microsoft Corp's new operating system with other software."It was pretty bad today," said Trude Latimer, an independent market strategist in Charlottesville, VA. "I think all the stocks were just hit with profit-taking, whether they all got the whole idea at the same time, I don't know. It is hard to get a handle on it"The sell-off drove the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite down 90.18 points, or 2.01 per cent at 4395.45. Despite the profit-taking wave on Friday the composite closed up 3.6 per cent, or 151.26 points for the week. Elsewhere, the picture was bleaker. The Dow Jones industrial average of the New York Stock Exchange closed down 218.42 points, or 2.05 per cent at 10425.21 and about 11 per cent from its all-time record high of 11,722.98 struck on January 14.Nasdaq declining stocks outstripped advancing issues, 2316 to 1834 on a volume totalling 1.73 billion shares. Microsoft Corp, the most heavily weighted stock in the Nasdaq composite, dropped an eye-popping 6-1/16 in heavy trading to 99-15 Internet trafficking equipment manufacturer Cisco Systems Inc, the second most influential issue in the composite, fell 5 to close at 130-15A Gartner Group study released Friday questioned whether Windows 2000 would interact smoothly with other software. Dell Computer Corp CEO Michael Dell also commented Thursday on the potential of the Linux system, calling into the question the future dominance of Windows.The Nasdaq composite spent nearly the entire trading session in negative territory, except for the first minutes of trade when the Nasdaq ticked up a few points to strike a new intra-day high of 4489.79. By late afternoon, the composite had swung nearly 130 points in the opposite direction to reach an intra-day low 396.23. It retraced some ground but still closed in negative territory.Popular Internet portal Yahoo lost 22-5/16 to close 231-1/32/, making it Nasdaq's third largest net loser; online auction site eBay, another heavy loser, forfeited 9 points to close at 153-3 Both companies had been among the victims of a series of hacker attacks this week that interrupted service. President Clinton, speakingatbriefing room, doubted that there would be any "instantaneous solution" to these types of attacks.
