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NEW YORK: Wall Street shares fell on Wednesday in a roller-coaster session market by a late slide in bank stocks after a mixed day for corporate earnings.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 92.12 points (0.92 percent) to end at 9,949.36, reversing early gains in a sharp decline late in the session that sent the blue-chip index below 10,000.
The Nasdaq composite dropped 12.74 points (0.59 percent) to 2,150.73 and the broad-market Standard & Poor's 500 index shed 9.66 points (0.89 percent) to close at 1,081.40.
The market reacted to news of record profits for banking giant Wells Fargo and positive earnings for Morgan Stanley after three consecutive quarterly losses, offset by news of a worse-than-expected loss of 1.56 billion dollars for aerospace giant Boeing.
The main indexes were positive for much of the day, but Jon Ogg at 24/7 Wall Street said a downgrade of Wells Fargo from banking analyst Dick Bove appeared to prompt the late reversal in the market.
"Dick Bove of Rochdale Securities may have been responsible for today's late day sell-off for the market as many banking stocks fell late in the day," Ogg said.
"The downgrade is based on the belief that what we saw on bottom-line results this morning is unsustainable earnings," Ogg added.
Some analysts said a guarded outlook on the US economy in the Federal Reserve Beige Book also contributed to caution.
"The Federal Reserve's latest Beige Book rained on the bulls' parade," said Andrea Kramer at Schaeffer's Investment Research.
"The central bank's report suggested that the US economy was on the road to recovery, but highlighted sluggish consumer spending patterns, as well as ongoing concerns plaguing both the banking and commercial real estate industries."
Wells Fargo shares abruptly turned negative, and ended with a loss of 5.12 percent at 28.90 dollars despite reporting a record profit of 3.2 billion dollars in the past quarter.
Rival bank Morgan Stanley held most of its early gains, and closed 4.80 percent higher at 34.08 dollars.
Elsewhere in banking, JPMorgan Chase slid 3.0 percent to 44.65 dollars and Bank of America tumbled 2.94 percent to 16.51 dollars.
A big drag on the market was a worse-than-expected loss of 1.56 billion dollars for Boeing, which also lowered its profit guidance for the year. Boeing fell 2.43 percent to 50.63 dollars.
In technology, Yahoo rallied 2.85 percent to 17.66 dollars after its announcement late Tuesday that profits tripled to 186 million dollars in the past quarter on aggressive cost cutting.
Bonds fell. The yield on the 10-year Treasury bond rose to 3.380 percent from 3.337 percent on Tuesday and that on the 30-year bond increased to 4.205 percent from 4.160 percent. Bond yields and prices move in opposite directions. - AFP/de
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