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US market indices drop

05 February 2009 08:32 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Vahab Rzayev - APA-Economics. After an early rally Wednesday, investors succumbed to concerns about disappointing earnings and the market ended the day with a loss. Falling consumer stocks weighed most heavily on the Dow Jones industrial average, which slid 122 points. Meanwhile, the tech-focused Nasdaq composite index showed only a moderate retreat, AP reports.
According to preliminary calculations, the Dow fell 121.70, or 1.51 percent, to 7,956.66.
Broader indicators also fell. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 6.28, or 0.75 percent, to 832.23, and the Nasdaq composite index fell 1.25, or 0.08 percent, to 1,515.05.
The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies fell 4.42, or 0.98 percent, to 448.48.
Declining issues outnumbered advancers by about 3 to 2 on the New York Stock Exchange, where volume came to 1.39 billion shares, compared with 1.35 billion shares traded Tuesday.
The dollar was mixed against other major currencies. Gold prices rose.
Light, sweet crude fell 46 cents to settle at $40.32 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
The latest corporate profit reports weighed on the market. Kraft posted a fourth-quarter profit drop of 72 percent, as revenue from the Velveeta, Oreo cookies and Maxwell House coffee businesses could not make up for high restructuring costs. The stock fell $2.63, or 9.2 percent, to $26.11.
Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 1.54 percent, Germany’s DAX index rose 2.69 percent, and France’s CAC-40 rose 2.90 percent. Japan’s Nikkei stock average rose 2.73 percent.