Stocks Take A Breather As Market Looks For Direction
Despite strength in Linux-related and business-to-business Internet companies, the Dow, Nasdaq and S&P 500 all finished lower in an up-and-down day that saw weakness in banks and brokers. Tech led the way early Wednesday, but many leaders faded toward the close.
According to preliminary numbers, the Nasdaq shed 1 point to 3586.10, the Dow sank 38.53 to 11068.12, and the S&P 500 fell 5.29 points to 1403.88.
The oil services group [$OSX.X>$OSX.X] gained 5.7% and was the strongest group of the day. At mid day, the oil services group had been the weakest group but staged a dramatic turn-around by the close. Other top-performing groups included oil [$XOI.X>$XOI.X], up 1.0%, forest and paper products [$FPPX.X>$FPPX.X], up 1.0%%, and Internets [$IIX.X>$IIX.X], up 1.3%. The weakest sectors of the day were banks [$BIX.X>$BIX.X], down 1.7%, and broker-dealers [$XBD.X>$XBD.X], down 2.4%.
Internet stocks showed considerable strength Wednesday with all-time high closes by CMGI [CMGI>CMGI], Inktomi [INKT>INKT] , Doubleclick [DCLK>DCLK], Lycos [LCOS>LCOS] and Verio [VRIO>VRIO]. Yahoo! [YHOO>YHOO], however, cooled after its 24% Tuesday gain and gave back 28 3/8 to close at 319 5/8.
Among big-cap technologies touching 52-week highs Wednesday were Texas Instruments [TXN>TXN], Cisco [CSCO>CSCO], Sun Microsystems [SUNW>SUNW], Ericsson [ERICY>ERICY], and Motorola [MOT>MOT].
Looking ahead to upcoming economic news, the Producer Price Index and the closely watched PPI core rate are due out Friday morning at 8:30 AM ET. Wall Street consensus looks for a 0.2% increase in the PPI and a 0.1% increase in the core rate.