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Dow 10,163.16 -76.76 (-0.75%)
Nasdaq 1,954.33 -16.70 (-0.85%)
S&P 500 1,132.89 -9.16 (-0.80%)
10-Yr Bond 4.242% +0.018
12:30PM: Indices continue to languish near their lows for the session as buyers haven't shown much giddy-up today... Market internals reflect the advantage held by sellers as the A/D line shows decliners leading advancers by a better than 2-to-1 margin at both the NYSE and Nasdaq... From a market-cap standpoint, the small- and mid-cap issues appear to be experiencing the most selling pressure as the Russell 2000 and S&P 400 Midcap Index are down 1.1% and 0.9%, respectively...
The specter of tomorrow's employment report is perhaps encouraging traders to step up profit taking efforts in some of the higher beta stocks that populate those indexes... NYSE Adv/Dec 918/2158, Nasdaq Adv/Dec 877/2022
12:00PM: Since the start of trading the major indices have been mired in negative territory with today's bearish bias being tied to the persistent rise in oil prices, anxiety ahead of tomorrow's employment report, and a sickly drug group... The latter circumstance stems from a disconcerting article in the New England Journal of Medicine that suggests heart trouble is not solely a Vioxx problem and that it extends across the entire class of cox 2 inhibitors, including Pfizer's Celebrex and Bextra...
Accordingly, investors have put Merck (MRK 30.50, -1.17) and Pfizer (PFE 29.65, -1.53) in their crosshairs today... Having done so, the Dow and S&P have been weighed down by their weakness which has spilled over to other drug stocks like Schering-Plough (SGP 18.12, -0.41), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ 56.41, -1.34) and Eli Lilly (LLY 59.73, -1.74)... The health care sector, in general, is getting beaten up as the biotech, health care supplies, and health care distributor groups also find themselves on today's list of worst-performing S&P industries...
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