Stocks Steer Lower

Updated from 12:58 a.m. EDT

Stocks in the U.S. conintued to track in the red Friday as another sizable loss at AIG (AIG - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) and oil's continuing advance gave sellers the advantage.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 136 points to 12,730.81, and the S&P 500 was losing 11 points at 1,386. The Nasdaq was down 11 points at 2,439.

One of the drags on the Dow was AIG, which was falling 8.5% to $40.38. The selloff came a day after the insurer said it lost $7.81 billion in its first quarter because of big writedowns on credit-default swaps and mortgage-related investments.

Also depressing sentiment was oil's extended climb into uncharted territory. In recent New York trading, crude was up $1.69 to $125.38 a barrel. Earlier, it was as high as $126.20 in the premarket.

Elsewhere in the commodities complex, gold reversed course and went down $8.30 to $886.60 an ounce. Silver was losing 30 cents to $16.57.

AIG wasn't the only key financial company making headlines as the week wound down. Citigroup (C - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr), also part of the Dow, edged down 1% to $24.04 as investors mulled word that CEO Vikram Pandit is looking at ways to shed as much as $400 billion in noncore assets.

One of the big winners was Circuit City (CC - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr), whose shares jumped 8.8% to $5.21 after the consumer-electronics seller said it would open its books to potential buyer Blockbuster (BBI - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) and the video rental chain's largest shareholder, billionaire investor Carl Icahn.

On the technology side, Nvidia (NVDA - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) was gaining 4.8% a day after its quarterly report, which was followed by a Stifel Nicolaus upgrade. Priceline.com (PCLN - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) was even more impressive, jumping 14.6% to $141.86 in the wake of its strong numbers.