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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: StanX Long who wrote (62072)	3/14/2002 2:06:33 AM
From: StanX Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Soft Sales Make Stocks a Hard Sell aol.smartmoney.com By Igor Greenwald March 13, 2002 INVESTORS KEPT their shopping carts stowed Wednesday, discounting stocks for a second straight day on disappointing retail sales and stubborn doubts about tech profits. The Dow lost 130 points to 10501, while the Nasdaq dropped 35 to 1862. The S&P 500 fell 11 to 1154. Networkers and chip makers raced downhill. The daily double was health care and fast food, until an unfounded hoof-and-mouth-disease scare sated the market's hunger for restaurant stocks. Retail results had been expected to cheer up Wall Street after the previous day's telecom sell-off. Instead, February's 0.3% increase rekindled worries about a weak recovery, with overextended consumers struggling just to match their generous outlays during the recent downturn. Excluding autos, retail sales rose 0.2% from January's none-too-shabby total. The numbers dashed expectations for an overall jump of nearly 1.0%. But they're unlikely to permanently dent the market's faith in the long-term recovery. Top chip maker Intel (INTC) dragged the blue chips lower after J.P. Morgan Chase cut its second-quarter earnings estimates, citing stagnant corporate demand for personal computers. The latest Goldman Sachs information-technology spending survey agreed. "The timing of a broad spending recovery seems to be slipping further out," it concluded. Intel's stock fell 5%. In the telecom-equipment space, Lucent Technologies (LU) took its second straight double-digit hit as it followed Tuesday's sales warning with a convertible-bond offering that could reach $2 billion. The stock lost 13%, hitting a new all-time low. The market took another dip in the afternoon after Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan chastised the country for its low savings rate, as he has in the past. One way to boost savings would be with higher interest rates, a prospect that's been worrying investors in recent weeks. Rightly or wrongly, Greenspan often gets the credit or the blame for market moves following his speeches.