
Selling Again Hits Most Sectors, but Late Rally Cuts Losses
Updated from 1:31 p.m. EDT
Broad-based selling continued to afflict practically every sector of the market as the weakness in airlines and energy shares spread into defense and basic materials issues, but many groups managed to come off their session lows as a late-day rally swept through the market.
Airlines mostly slid following a brief reprieve Tuesday, but many of the stocks closed above their lows of the day.
AMR
(AMR)
, the parent of
American Airlines
and
TWA
, fell 1% to $19.81, while
Delta Air Lines
(DAL) - Get Report
rose 0.5% to $23.03.
UAL
(UAL) - Get Report
, the holding company for
United Airlines
, dipped 1.8% to $18.65, and
Northwest
(NWAC)
dropped 9.5% to $11.68.
Continental
,
(CAL) - Get Report
, which was in positive territory earlier, was back in negative territory, losing 0.7% to $17.59.
US Airways
(U) - Get Report
also reversed the positive trend, slipping 5.3% to $5.50.
Southwest
(LUV) - Get Report
was up 1.2% to $13.14.
Technology stocks were shaky, but again rebounded from their lows of the session.
Dell
(DELL) - Get Report
, was off 3.7%,
Microsoft
(MSFT) - Get Report
, down 1.2%, and
Oracle
(ORCL) - Get Report
slipped 1.1%.
Cisco
(CSCO) - Get Report
slipped 0.6%, and
Sun Microsystems
(SUNW) - Get Report
dropped 1.4%.
Texas Instruments
(TXN) - Get Report
shed 1.8%, and
Intel
(INTC) - Get Report
lost 5.4%.
Aerospace and defense companies produced mixed results.
Raytheon
(RTN) - Get Report
finished ahead 3.7% to $32.72.
Northrop Grumman
(NOC) - Get Report
rose 1.6% to $96.30.
Lockheed Martin
(LMT) - Get Report
continued to slide, falling 3.3% to $43.14.
Brokerage stocks primarily sold off, but pared their losses by the closing bell.
Morgan Stanley
(MWD)
was unchanged, but
Goldman Sachs
(GS) - Get Report
rose 0.5% to $67.83.
Merrill Lynch
(MER)
was down 2.1%, while
Lehman Brothers
(LEH)
sank 2.6%.
Charles Schwab
(SCH)
dipped 6.9%.
Bank of America
(BAC) - Get Report
was down 0.1%, while
Citigroup
(C) - Get Report
fell 1.6%, and
American Express
(AXP) - Get Report
fell 4.5%.
Insurers were also hurting Wednesday with the group facing up to $30 billion in claims from last week's attacks, according to
Bloomberg
.
ACE
(ACE)
lost 8.2% to $23.87.
American International Group
(AIG) - Get Report
lost 0.5%, while
XL Capital
(XL) - Get Report
dropped 4.7% to $65.37.
Energy companies were broadly lower as the price of oil continued to sink. Oil refiner
Sunoco
(SUN) - Get Report
was off 4.7% to $34.20, while
Royal Dutch Petroleum
(RD)
sank 5.2% to $48.05.
Phillips Petroleum
(P)
slipped 5.1% to $52.84, while
Schlumberger
(SLB) - Get Report
dipped 7.1% to $44.20.
Texaco
(TX) - Get Report
,
Exxon Mobil
(XOM) - Get Report
,
Kerr-McGee
(KMG)
and
Halliburton
(HAL) - Get Report
were also lower.
Basic materials stocks, which were mixed earlier, were down across the board in the afternoon.
DuPont
(DD) - Get Report
and
Westvaco
(W) - Get Report
were in the red. DuPont fell 0.8% to $35.08, while paper products company Westvaco dropped 3.7% to $25.35. Chemical company
Hercules
(HPC)
fell 3.5% to $8.77. Paper products companies such as
Weyerhauser
(WY) - Get Report
,
Williamette Industries
(WLL) - Get Report
were lower, but
Georgia-Pacific
(GP)
inched up. Steelmakers
Nucor
(NUE) - Get Report
and
Allegheny Technologies
(ATI) - Get Report
lost ground.
Retailers were mixed.
Wal-Mart
(WMT) - Get Report
rose 0.5%, and
Kmart
(K) - Get Report
climbed 2.8%.
Home Depot
(HD) - Get Report
lost 3.8%.
Apparel retailer
Gap
(GPS) - Get Report
rose 2.4%, while
Federated Department Stores
(FD)
sank 2.6%, to $28.
Sears
(S) - Get Report
was down 3% to $33.08. Online retailer
Amazon.com
(AMZN) - Get Report
gained 0.3%, and bookseller
Barnes & Noble
(BKS) - Get Report
was up 2.2% to $35.60.
In the consumer products arena,
Procter & Gamble
(PG) - Get Report
rose 0.5%.
Philip Morris
(MO) - Get Report
slipped 0.6%, and
McDonald's
(MCD) - Get Report
gained 1.8%.
Coca-Cola
(KO) - Get Report
tacked on 3 cents to $49.50, and
Gillette
(G) - Get Report
was down 2.1% to $29.96.
Media stocks, which were trending higher in morning activity, were pushed back, but
AOL Time Warner
(AOL)
was up 1.6% to $30.95, while newspaper publishers
Tribune
(TRB)
and
Knight Ridder
(KRI)
were both down slightly.
Gannett Company
(GCI) - Get Report
was off a penny to $60.44.