Leading Groups Buckle And A '98 Low Pierced In Unremitting Sell-Off Bounce Is Not Guaranteed Talk of a prolonged bear grows louder as distrust and fear grip the market.(A)

Byline: JONAH KERI

Home builders, hospitals and select retailers joined the ranks of walking wounded Tuesday, denting the market's few remaining pockets of strength.

Bargain hunters briefly tried to stem the tide at midday. But concerns over Fourth of July weekend terrorist attacks, breakdowns by several leading stocks and heavy down volume tossed more fuel on the market's blazing inferno. The Nasdaq slid 3.3%, the S&P 500 2.1%, the Dow 1.1%.

Add these latest woes to the threats of massive accounting fraud, a devastated tech market and media outlets predicting prolonged carnage, even a 10-year bear market.

That's not all. The Nasdaq officially made the roaring bull market of late 1998 to early 2000 a memory Tuesday, taking out that year's low.

Will the Nasdaq stop there and rebound? Not necessarily. The tech-stuffed index found support around its Sept. 21 lows several times over the last few weeks. But it ultimately buckled. Staring its 1998 lows in the face, it may do the same.

"Could it drop more? Of course it could," said Jeremy Siegel, professor of finance at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. "Tech stocks are still not cheap, and capital spending may not come back to where it was."