U.S. stocks sagged in volatile trading on Thursday after weak outlooks from technology companies and downbeat comments from a Federal Reserve official gave investors little reason to buy.

"You've gotten through the inventory rebuilding part of the recovery... and now things may ratchet down," says Jim Awad, managing director of Zephyr Management. Awad tells Andrew O'Day "you have a tug-of-war between good corporate earnings reports yet fears about what the rest of this year and next year are going to look like, especially as the fiscal austerity measures worldwide start to kick in." even earnings, he says, have a devil in the details.