[BRIEFING.COM] The stock market stumbled out of the gate this week, tripped up by the absence of spirited sector leadership, losses in the small-cap stocks, disconcerting commentary on inflation from Atlanta Fed President Jack Guynn, and a report from the NAHB that homebuilder confidence slumped to an 11-year low.
Those factors all combined to overshadow the positive forces of better than expected earnings results from Circuit City (CC 28.63, -0.85) and CarMax (KMX 33.89, +2.39), and news that Nokia (NOK 20.21, +0.24) and Siemens are entering into a joint venture that will combine their telecom network equipment businesses.
Losses were led by the energy services (-3.13%) and basic materials (-1.87%) sectors, which got clipped again, along with commodity prices, on economic growth concerns. As it turned out, all ten economic sectors closed the day with a loss. Information technology (-0.36%), which was aided by the Nokia-Siemens deal, fared the best.
At its low for the Day, the Dow was down 107 points. Late-day buying helped cut its losses, but when the closing bell rang, each of the major indices was still well below the unchanged mark. The Russell 2000, with a 1.8% decline, led the pullback on Wall Street that saw 1.52 billion shares change hands at the NYSE.
The specter of rising interest rates helped prop up the dollar which, in turn, acted as a weight on dollar-denominated commodity prices. The Treasury market sputtered a bit on Guynn's comment that inflation is beyond an acceptable range, but ended the day little changed as the 10-year note dropped just 3 ticks to bring its yield to 5.14%. NYSE Adv/Dec 857/2415...Nasdaq Adv/Dec 842/2206
DOW Price at posting:
0.0¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held
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