![]()
- Job Market Politics to Keep Interest Rates Low
- AIG, Symbol of Crisis, Watches Its Stock Zoom Back
- Disney Profit, Sales Top Street Forecasts; Shares Jump
- Bill Gates Praises Apple's Jobs for 'Saving the Company'
- Cities With the Most Home Price Reductions
- Cramer: The Real Reason Stocks Fell Thursday
- Is Euphoric Market Ignoring Warning Signs?
- Video Game Sales Plunge, but Have They Hit Bottom?
- Despite Rhetoric, Obama Has Few Options to Boost Jobs
- Microsoft's Bill Gates Praises Apple's Steve Jobs For 'Saving the Company'
- Gold Is a Bad Inflation Hedge—Like Oil: Stock Picker
- Intel's Andy Bryant Offers An Explanation
- US 'Actively Working' on Weaker Dollar: Fund Manager
- Options Boil on Biotech Buyout Rumors
- Warren Buffett's $100,000 Offer and $500,000 Advice for Columbia Business School Students
- Activision Blizzard's "Modern Warfare 2" Sales Break Records
- 5-Star Manager's 5 Stocks for Changing Markets
- What's The Forecast from Retailers? Proceed With Caution
MOST SHARED
- Warren Buffett and Bill Gates Share Their 'Optimism' With Eager Columbia Business Students
- Pharma & Social Media
- Cities With the Most Home Price Reductions
- Warren Buffett's $100,000 Offer and $500,000 Advice for Columbia Business School Students
- Disney Profit, Sales Top Street Forecasts; Shares Jump
- China Fourth Quarter Growth Could Hit 10%: Official
- Disney CFO and Parks Chief to Swap Roles
- Housing Recovery 'Still In Uncharted Territory': HUD Secretary
- Despite Rhetoric, Obama Has Limited Options To Boost Jobs
Stock closed sharply lower Friday as General Electric's earnings miss cast a gloomy haze over earnings season and consumer confidence hit a 26-year low.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 2 percent to close at 12325.42, while the S&P 500 dropped 2 percent to 1332.83 and the Nasdaq skidded 2.6 percent to 2290.24.
Major U.S. Indexes |
| Last | Change | % Change | 1 Week % Change | YTD % Change | |
| Dow | 12325.42 | -256.56 | -2.04% | -2.25% | -7.08% |
| S&P 500 | 1332.83 | -27.72 | -2.04 | -2.74 | -9.23 |
| NASDAQ | 2290.24 | -61.46 | -2.61 | -3.41 | -13.65 |
| Russell 2000 | 688.16 | -19.26 | -2.72 | -3.58 | -10.17 |
For the week, the Dow is off 2.3 percent, the S&P 500 is down 2.7 percent and the Nasdaq has fallen a whopping 3.4 percent.
General Electric [GE
Loading...
()
] plunged 13 percent after the conglomerate reported an unexpected 6 percent drop in earnings and missed expectations as the economic slump and credit crunch squeezed profits across the board, though a lot of the problems were concentrated in the financial unit. Goldman Sachs downgraded its rating on GE to "neutral" following the report (GE is the parent of CNBC and CNBC.com.)
GE's decline, in percent terms, was the largest since Black Monday in 1987, when the stock shed 17.5 percent. The drop has shaved $46.9 billion off GE's market cap since yesterday. Nearly 366 million GE shares changed hands today, the largest daily volume on record.
Still, GE's jolt to the market wasn't seen as an omen of more bad things to come.
"The only perception that has changed today is the perception of GE's ability to forecast their own earnings," said Michael Cohn, chief investment strategist at Atlantis Asset Management.
"My feeling is that this market is actually acting very resilient for the amount of bad news it’s had to shake off over the last month or so," said Michael Cohn, chief investment strategist at Atlantis Asset Management. As long as the Dow stays in a range of 11700 to 12700, Cohn said, there isn't much cause for concern.
Industrials and techs led the decline Friday, with the S&P 500 industrial index finishing down 4.8 percent, followed by the S&P information-technology gauge, which dropped 3 percent.
Besides GE, engine maker Cummins [CMI
Loading...
()
], uniform manufacturer Cintas [CTAS
Loading...
()
] and adhesive-label maker Avery Dennison [AVY
Loading...
()
] were among the biggest decliners among industrials.
And, with other blue-chip companies due to report earnings next week, the GE surprise sparked concerns that this was just the beginning of the bad news.
The Nasdaq fell more sharply than the Dow or S&P 500 as technology stocks were hammered by concerns about a slowdown in IT spending. Standard & Poor's cut its rating on networking-gear maker Cisco [CSCO
Loading...
()
] amid indications that customers are delaying orders. In the chip sector, Caris cut its price target on Nvidia [NVDA
Loading...
()
] and AMD's [AMD
Loading...
()
] technology chief resigned, with no indication that the company plans to find a successor.
Among tech companies reporting earnings next week: Intel is due on Tuesday; IBM [IBM
Loading...
()
] and eBay [EBAY
Loading...
()
] on Wednesday; Nokia [NOK
Loading...
()
] and Google [GOOG
Loading...
()
] on Thursday; and, Xerox [XRX
Loading...
()
] on Friday.
In today's episode of As the Yahoo Turns, Yahoo [YHOO
Loading...
()
] executives were said to be meeting to discuss alternatives to a Microsoft [MSFT
Loading...
()
] -- or now, Microsoft-News Corp. [NWS
Loading...
()
] -- bid, the Wall Street Journal reported. Still, many insiders view a Microsoft deal sans News Corp. will be the most likely outcome, according to the paper.
Financials, already pretty beaten up, handled the GE news pretty well for most of the day, though the S&P financial index finished down 1.8 percent amid jitters ahead of next week's earnings from the sector.
JPMorgan [JPM
Loading...
()
] is slated to report on Wednesday, Merrill Lynch [MER
Loading...
()
] on Thursday and Citigroup [C
Loading...
()
] on Friday.
CIT Group [CIT
Loading...
()
], a GE rival in leasing and financing, fell 4.6 percent.
Washington Mutual [WM
Loading...
()
] dropped 4.1 percent after Goldman Sachs said the largest U.S. savings and loan may have to set aside $14 billion this year for credit losses, a statistic that prompted the brokerage to take the rare move of recommending that investors sell short WaMu stock. WaMu reports earnings on Tuesday.
Elsewhere on the earnings front, increased demand for cancer drugs helped Genentech [DNA
Loading...
()
] beat analysts' earnings target but sales of all four of its big brand-name drugs, including Avastin, fell short of forecasts.
In economic news, consumer sentiment fell to a 26-year low, according to a report from the University of Michigan. U.S. import prices rose 2.8 percent in March; excluding oil, all other import prices jumped 1.1 percent, the biggest increase on record.
Airlines continue to face troubles, as American Airlines, owned by AMR [AMR
Loading...
()
], canceled another 570 flights Friday and another low-cost carrier, Frontier Airlines [FRNT
Loading...
()
], filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. But unlike other airlines filing for bankruptcy in recent weeks, Frontier said it plans to keep running while it reorganizes.
Ailing home-goods retailer Linens 'n Things is also expected to file for bankruptcy, the Wall Street Journal reported. Earlier this week, rival Bed Bath & Beyond [BBBY
Loading...
()
] reported its earnings dropped 16 percent and issued a disappointing outlook as the housing slump continued to take a toll on home-related retailers.
On Tap for Next Week:
MONDAY: Retail sales, business inventories
TUESDAY: J&J, Intel, WaMu earnings; Empire State manufacturing; PPI
WEDNESDAY: Coke, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, eBay, IBM earnings; mortgage applications; housing starts; CPI; industrial production; crude inventories; Beige Book; Fed's Yellen, Plosser speak
THURSDAY: Merrill Lynch, Nokia, Pfizer, Capital One, Google earnings; jobless claims; Philly Fed report; leading indicators; Fed's Kohn, Fisher speak
FRIDAY: Caterpillar, Citigroup, Honeywell, Xerox earnings; Fed's Lacker, Rosengren speak
Send comments to .
- Warren Buffett and Bill Gates spoke to Columbia students, and Buffett made the students a startling offer.
- They may have wrecked their companies or saved our economy. Tell us what you think.
- Big pharma embraces social media, but how much should a tightly regulated sector say on Facebook or Twitter?
- A European dating site finds lovelorn singles from one country to be consistently uglier. Which is it?
- Contributor David Pogue looks at two of the latest efforts to perfect the digital pocket camera.
- PepsiCo is ramping up its onsite health facilities for workers.













