off, Xilinx Inc., down 4.9 percent to $27.66, and Altera Corp., off 4.9 percent at $19.30, were among the biggest decliners on the Nasdaq. On the New York Stock Exchange, Texas Instruments Inc. fell 3.4 percent to $21.69. "They (semiconductors) got really hammered," said Robert Drust, managing director of listed trading at investment bank Wedbush Morgan in Los Angeles. "It looked like somebody just had a specific sell program and just pounded it." McDonald's Corp gave a slight boost to the Dow, rising 46 cents, or 1.7 percent, to $27.60. Cisco Systems Inc., the largest maker of gear for directing traffic over the Internet, dragged on the S&P as its shares fell 2.7 percent to $18.40. Fannie Mae shares fell 2.4 percent to $65.51 as investors grew wary of accounting issues at the No. 1 U.S. housing finance company. Shares in Monster Wordwide, the Internet jobs search company, rose $1.30, or 5.8 percent, to $23.58, after it said it had raised prices for job postings on its Web site and a research note from Piper Jaffray said it expected the stock to outperform its estimate in the current quarter. --More 0035 Local Time 2135 GMT
