Profit taking huh? Maybe the last chance to cut their losses and "GET OUT"?
YAHOO.COM Market Update
Market Update 4:20 pm : What was shaping up to be a respectable bounce in the aftermath of yesterday's broad-based drubbing lost steam going into the close, as many of the market leaders behind this year's early stock rally succumbed to more aggressive profit-taking.
Before the bell, a sense that Wednesday's CPI-induced sell-off was overdone renewed some enthusiasm for stocks and even helped bonds regain some noticeable upside momentum. To wit, the yield on the 10-yr note fell 8 basis points to 5.06%. Nevertheless, the rate-sensitive Financial sector's failure to take advantage of falling bond yields merely exacerbated lingering concerns about building inflationary pressures slowing economic expansion and potentially ending to 11 straight quarters of double-digit profit growth. Energy's inability to take advantage of a 1.1% rebound in the price of crude also added to the growing realization that Energy sector profits are unlikely to increase at the same pace as over the past year. Adding to today's struggles to keep sellers on the sidelines for the first time in several sessions was the inability by the Dow, S&P and Nasdaq to find support above key technical levels of 11174, 1267 and 2189, respectively.
The Dow initially found some modest support from Home Depot (HD 38.41 +0.40), which expanded its stock buyback program by $2.0 bln, and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ 32.48 +0.32), which was upgraded by Morgan Stanley. However, the temptation to lock in more gains, especially from three of the biggest reasons the Dow flirted with all-time highs last week -- Boeing (BA 82.73 -1.04), Caterpillar (CAT 74.62 -1.29) and United Technologies (UTX 62.66 -1.09) -- weighed heavily on the price-weighted index.
The Nasdaq got an early boost from Dell (DELL 23.95 +0.32)