Stocks Pinned Down by AIG, Rising Oil
Updated from 9:38 a.m. EDT
Stocks in the U.S. were in the red Friday morning as another sizable loss at
AIG
(AIG) - Get Report
and oil's continuing advance gave sellers the advantage.
The
Dow Jones Industrial Average
was down 91 points to 12,776, and the
S&P 500
was losing 7 points at 1391. The
Nasdaq
was fractionally lower at 2450. All three were off their worst levels.
One of the drags on the Dow was AIG, which was falling 6.6% to $41.22. The selloff came a day after the insurer said it lost $7.81 billion
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 futures were up $1.09 to $124.78 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 $873.80 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) - Get Report
, also part of the Dow, edged up 0.3% to $24.36 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) - Get Report
, whose shares jumped 9.4% to $5.24 after the consumer-electronics seller said it would open its books to potential buyer
Blockbuster
( BBI) and the video rental chain's largest shareholder, billionaire investor Carl Icahn.
On the technology side,
Nvidia
(NVDA) - Get Report
was gaining 5% a day after its
, which was followed by a Stifel Nicolaus upgrade.
Priceline.com
(PCLN)
was even more impressive, jumping nearly 16% to $143.16 in the wake of its
.
Activision
(ATVI) - Get Report
was gaining 7% after sales of
Guitar Hero 3
and
Call of Duty IV
led to robust
.
Treasury prices were surrendering their early gains. The 10-year note was unchanged in price, yielding 3.78%, and the 30-year bond was gaining just 5/32, yielding 4.53%.
The dollar was weak against most of its competitors, including declines of 0.8% against both the yen and the Swiss franc. The euro rose 0.2% to $1.5437.
On the data side, the March U.S. trade deficit shrank to $58.2 billion from $61.7 billion in February, in part because the stumbling greenback made domestic goods cheaper overseas. Analysts expected the deficit to be $61 billion.
Meanwhile, markets overseas were sinking. Tokyo's Nikkei fell 2.1% overnight, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng shed 1.5%. Europe's major indices weren't much better. London's FTSE was losing 1.2%, and the Paris Cac was retreating 2.5%. Frankfurt's Dax was lower by 1.3%.
This article was written by a staff member of TheStreet.com.