Stocks Fall on Disappointing Earnings, Confidence Report
STOCKS SLIPPED on a disappointing consumer-confidence report and mixed news from component companies of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.</br></br>The Dow fell 91.34 points, or 0.9%, to 10151.13, as DuPont was hurt by disappointing earnings and Hewlett-Packard's stock was pushed down by industrywide worries about the demand for printers. And American International Group was pummeled by mounting legal concerns, including heightened interest by New York state regulators regarding the insurer's booking of premiums on workers' compensation coverage.</br></br>Those developments overshadowed a 1.1% rise in International Business Machines shares, to $75.43, after the computer maker announced a $5 billion share buyback and a dividend increase.</br></br>Other stock indictors also weakened. The Nasdaq Composite Index lost 1.2%, or 23.34 points, to 1927.44. The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index ended at 1151.74, off 0.9%, or 10.36 points.</br></br>The Conference Board's consumer-confidence index fell to 97.7 this month, worse than the consensus expectation of 98.0 in a survey of economists by Dow Jones Newswires and the worst in five months.