JUMPY INVESTORS PUSH DOW DOWN 83 POINTS : WITHERING CORPORATE PROFITS TRIGGER FALL.

Byline: Reed Abelson The New York Times

Investors fled the stock market Thursday as signs of weakening corporate profits further shook confidence already undermined by fears of higher interest rates.

Led by significant declines among technology and health care stocks, the biggest loser was the Nasdaq Composite Index, which posted its second-worst drop of the year with loss of 3.1 percent.

The Dow Jones industrial average, which consists of larger blue-chip stocks, also fell, dropping 83.11 points, or 1.5 percent, to 5,520.54.

Only the bond market, which benefited from investors' skittishness toward stocks, ended the day with a gain.

While Thursday's decline broke no records, it signals what some market analysts contend will be an increasingly turbulent time for investors. After a year and a half of powerful gains, with few clouds on its horizon, the stock market is threatening to become much more volatile. While few analysts will go so far as to predict that a bear market is near, they show little of their earlier optimism.

``It has been a clear change in the market from a persistently rising market to one in a trading range, a back-and-forth market,'' said Richard B. Hoey, the chief economist for Dreyfus Corp.

The market's recent losses have wiped out much of the year's earlier gains, especially among smaller stocks. In slightly more than a month, the Nasdaq has lost 11.4 percent of its value, its worst correction since 1994, when it lost 13.7 percent over more than three months. Even the Dow is down 4.5 percent from its peak in late May.

Worsening investors' growing sense of unease Thursday was a flurry of disappointing earnings forecasts. Late Tuesday, Motorola Inc., a leading maker of semiconductors, surprised Wall Street by announcing weaker-than-expected results for its second quarter.

Hewlett-Packard Co., the computer maker, followed suit with an announcement late Wednesday that the company's order growth had slowed. United Healthcare, the nation's largest health maintenance organization, piled on with a disclosure Thursday that its second-quarter results would be weak.

Because these stocks are well-known and well-watched on Wall Street, the reaction spread to the rest of the market. ``Obviously, it's been just one disappointment after another in the name stocks,'' said Jerry Dombcik, the director of research for McDonald & Co. in Cleveland. ``It's just dragging everything down with it.''

Shares of Hewlett-Packard plummeted 10.625, to close at 78.375. Motorola, which lost 8.625 on Wednesday, fell an additional 2, to 55.875. United Healthcare plunged 13.25, to 31.

Earlier in the day, the declines threatened to be much worse. The Dow, for example, was down as much as 156 points in the afternoon. The Nasdaq threatened to suffer from its worst day since October 1987 in terms of a price drop when the index plunged 47 points before ending the day down 34.83 points, at 1,106.36.

The sell-off seemed the inevitable result of a stream of bad news continuing to plague the market. Last week's government report on June's employment intensified investors' concerns that the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates to slow down the economy, which would make stocks less attractive as investments.

The series of earnings disappointments added to those concerns by increasing worries about corporate profitability, both in the second quarter and for the remainder of the year.

``In a sense, the fears both go to the price-earnings multiple, which is interest rates as well as earnings,'' Hoey said.

Adding to Wall Street's worries was the disconcerting news that investors may have less of an appetite for stocks. Much of the recent enthusiasm in the market was a result of the belief that as investors flocked to mutual funds, stock prices would continue to rise. But in June, the cash flows into stock mutual funds were estimated to have slowed down by nearly 40 percent from the previous month.

Still, investors may simply have to get used to a more realistic state of affairs. Over the last year and half, they have enjoyed an unprecedentedly smooth ride to higher prices. There has been a ``remarkable steadiness and consistency to the advance,'' argued Arnold Kaufman, the editor of The Outlook, a market newsletter published by Standard & Poor's.

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Photo: (Color) Analysts say Thursday's Dow drop may be a si gn of an increasingly turbulent time for investors.

Associated Press