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US markets close lower

27 February 2009 08:04 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Vahab Rzayev - APA-Economics. Health insurers and drug companies, some of the better performers on Wall Street lately, led the market lower Thursday after the White House proposed cutting payments to private insurance plans, AP reports.
The major stock indexes gave up early leads to close lower.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 88.81, or 1.2 percent, to 7,182.08, pulled down by stocks including drug maker Merck & Co., down $1.87, or 6.7 percent, at $26.04 and health products company Johnson & Johnson, off $1.52, or 2.8 percent, at $52.44.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 12.07, or 1.6 percent, to 752.83 and the Nasdaq composite index fell 33.96, or 2.4 percent, to 1,391.47.
The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies fell 8.49, or 2.1 percent, to 392.95.
Declining issues outnumbered advancers by about 8 to 7 on the New York Stock Exchange, where consolidated volume came to 6.48 billion shares, down from Wednesday’s 7.29 billion.
Financial shares also got a lift after banks in Europe announced plans to reshape operations.
The Royal Bank of Scotland announced a massive restructuring plan to jettison many of its businesses. The stock jumped $1.24, or 18.8 percent, to $7.83 in New York trading. And troubled Swiss bank UBS replaced its chief executive. UBS rose 88 cents, or 10 percent, to $9.64.
The dollar was mixed against other major currencies, while gold prices fell.
Light, sweet crude rose $2.72 to settle at $45.22 on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Overseas, Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 1.73 percent, Germany’s DAX index rose 2.51 percent, and France’s CAC-40 rose 1.78 percent. Earlier, Japan’s Nikkei stock average slipped 0.04 percent