Industrials Decline 48.24 Points As Program Selling Is Stepped Up
The program selling and profit-taking that stalled the stock market's rally Wednesday turned mean yesterday, sending prices plunging in the afternoon.</br></br>The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 48.24 points at 2026.03 on volume of 197.3 million shares. The volume was down from the 211 million shares that changed hands Wednesday. Declining issues were ahead of gainers, 3 to 1, on the New York Stock Exchange.</br></br>Broader market indexes also lost ground. Standard & Poor's 500-Stock Index was off 5.22 to 263.84 and the New York Stock Exchange Index fell 2.56 to 148.92.</br></br>Traders and money managers said investors had been getting increasingly nervous as the stock market failed to extend its gains past the post-crash high of 2074.27 set Tuesday. When gold and oil prices began to rise yesterday morning, investors began retreating from stocks. The exodus gained momentum in the afternoon as stock-index futures reached levels at which they became underpriced in relation to the cash indexes, triggering computerized trading programs in which stocks were sold and futures contracts were bought.</br></br>But the sell-off didn't disturb many market professionals, who argued that the market's recent run-up to a new post-crash high had set the stage for a correction.