Anemic Earnings Reports Cost Dow Almost 43 Points
NEW YORK, Oct. 9ÛÓStocks feU shaiply today as the corporate earnings outlook weakened and the dollar declined. The technology-heavy Nasdaq Stock Market index tumbled 2.7 percent, falling to its lowest closing level since Aug. 2.</br></br>The Dow Jones industrial average slid 42.99 points to close at 4726.22. The blue-chip barometer dropped more than 50 points early, prompting the New York Stock Exchange to re- strict program trading. The Dow pared its losses by about 20 points, but fell as much as 58 points in the afternoon before recovering somewhat.</br></br>Declining issues outnumbered advancing, ones by about 13 to 5 on the New York Stock Exchange. Volume was relatively light because of the Columbus Day holiday, with 275.29 million shares changing hands on the NYSE, down from 313.63 million on Friday.</br></br>Investors continued a strategy established last week of selling technology and cyclical shares and buying consumer stocks, such as those of drug companies, that could be expected to perform well even in a recession. But today, the selling extended to consumer stocks.</br></br>Broad market indexes suffered more than their blue-chip counterparts. The Nasdaq index slid 27.30 to 984.74. The NYSE composite index fell 2.03 to 310.35, the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index dropped 4.12 to 578.37 and the American Stock Exchange index declined 6.06 to 527.48.