NEW YORK (
) -- Stocks finished Wednesday down after
Federal Reserve
Chairman Ben Bernanke said the
that rising inflation could preclude the central bank from embarking on another round of quantitative easing.
The
Dow Jones Industrial Average
fell 53.05 points, or 0.41%, to 12,952.07. The
S&P 500
dropped 6.5 points to 1,365.68 and the
Nasdaq Composite
fell 19.87 points to 2,966.89.
Breadth within the Dow was negative with 21 of the index's 30 components posting losses.
The biggest percentage decliners among the blue chips were
Hewlett-Packard
(HPQ) - Get Report
,
Bank of America
(BAC) - Get Report
and
Alcoa
(AA) - Get Report
.
|
Hewlett-Packard shares dropped 3.32% to $25.31. The technology company is laying off about 275 people from its WebOS division, according to media reports.
HP gets a
and a hold rating.
Shares of Alcoa fell 1.93% to $10.17. Japanese aluminum buyers are going to increase their premiums paid to aluminum producers starting in April,
Bloomberg
said.
TheStreet Ratings
gives Alcoa a
and a hold rating.
Bank of America shares dropped 1.73% to $7.97. The bank's stock was upgraded to
by
TheStreet Ratings
on Wednesday.
Bank of America gets a
from
TheStreet Ratings
.
The biggest gainer in the Dow on Wednesday was
Coca-Cola
(KO) - Get Report
. Shares rose 1.47% to $69.86. This was the only stock with a gain of more than 1% on Wednesday.
--
Written by Alexandra Zendrian in New York
.
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