Wall Street Opens Week With Losses

On the heels of the news, Yahoo! was downgraded to sell by Citigroup, Soleil Securities and ThinkPanmure. RBC Capital Markets and Stanford Research each slashed their price targets on the stock. Yahoo! shares were plummeting 15% to $24.37. Microsoft investors reacted positively to the development in the early going, though shares of the Dow component closed off 0.6%.

Also having a rough day was Countrywide (CFC Quote) a trading day after Bank of America (BAC Quote) disclosed it might not assume part of Countrywide's debt in its deal to take out the struggling mortgage lender.

Friedman Billings cut Countrywide to underperform, saying that BofA should abandon the merger entirely, or at least sharply lower the buyout price. On Friday, Standard & Poor's downgraded Countrywide's credit rating to junk. The stock sank 10.4%. Dow member BofA was down 2.1%.

Sprint Nextel (S Quote) was one of the winners, after separate reports emerged that it was considering spinning off its Nextel division and that Deutsche Telekom (DT Quote) was mulling a bid for the entire company. Sprint Nextel rose 12%.

As for the day's earnings, gold miner Goldcorp (GG Quote) topped the consensus estimate by 2 cents a share in a quarter that saw gold prices reach record-breaking levels. The company's earnings soared 84% to $229.5 million, or 32 cents a share. Shares bumped up 2.2%.

Entertainment company Marvel Enterprises (MVL Quote) ramped up 9.4% after sailing past first-quarter analyst targets and lifting its full-year guidance. Marvel also announced that its Iron Man film took the top spot in its opening weekend, raking in $100.75 million in domestic box-office receipts.

In the red was poultry concern Pilgrim's Pride (PPC Quote), which lost $111.4 million last quarter as it suffered from ballooning feed costs that CEO Clint Rivers blames squarely on "the federal government's deeply flawed ethanol policy." Pilgrim's Pride said its costs for corn and soybean meal have surged $200 million from last year. Shares gave up 0.8%.