The stock market is trading much lower today, and the NASDAQ is leading the chargeto the downside. In a market that has become much more jittery over the past week, the technology stocks have been the biggest disappointment. No doubt the expectations were high for them coming into this earnings season, and for the most part they have failed to meet those high expectations. Today the major technology names that disappointed on the corporate earnings front were Motorola and Qualcomm. Both of these companies are in the mobile handset market and both had a pretty bleak outlook. Qualcomm missed their revenue number for this quarter, and is getting crushed by about 13% today.

Apple shares are also trading lower by about 4% on big volume today as the iPad has received some less than stellar reviews from some major names. In fact, a full article of the iPad flawshas circulated today. The market is starting to wonder if the release of the iPad is a little bit less of a boost to Apple than they initially thought.

Maybe investors just had hopes that were simply too high for the tech sector, but the NASDAQ is definitely starting to correct itself, losing 4% in the last 5 days. The overall market continues to be pulled down by uncertainty in Washington as well as around the world. There is no doubt that the market hates uncertainty, and the last few days is a great example of that. Right now investors are looking to find a clearer picture of what may be in the offing for the economy as well as the market. As I have said numerous times before the biggest deal right now is making sure the jobs picture improves so that the consumer gets healthier. It doesn’t have to be a perfect outlook to help the market right now, but we do need to get some clarity.