“THERE IS SUCH an overvaluation of technology stocks, it is absurd,” Ballmer said to a group of journalists here at a technology conference being given by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. “I could put our own company and others in that category.”

       Ballmer’s comment came in response to a question about which stories are undercovered by the business media.

       Asked then what Microsoft’s stock price should be, he said, “less.”

       “I used to believe in the theory of perfect markets, but I no longer believe that,” he added.

        The technology heavy Nasdaq composite index on Thursday suffered its fourth largest point decline ever, losing 107.67 points, or 3.77 percent, to end at 2750.5.

       Because Nasdaq is weighted to reflect the capitalization of the stocks in the index, a small number of companies have a very large effect on the performance of the composite. Those companies include Microsoft, which has the largest capitalization of any company in the U.S. and therefore has the largest impact on Nasdaq.
 
       “Today we were beginning to see some damage in the market leaders and a lot of those are tech,” said Gary Anderson, of an Oregon-based money management firm.