Shares Recede in Quiet Session As Investors Await Key Data
Stocks finished a quiet session moderately lower Monday as investors waited for a raft of quarterly results and economic data later this week.</br></br>The Dow Jones industrial average fell 23.36, or 0.19 percent, to 12,302.06. The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index fell 4.51, or 0.34 percent, to 1328.32, and the Nasdaq composite index fell 14.42, or 0.63 percent, to 2275.82.</br></br>Wachovia surprised investors by posting a first-quarter loss of $350 million and cutting its quarterly dividend by 41 percent. The bank, which analysts had expected to post a profit, also said it plans to raise $7 billion through a stock offering.</br></br>But investors appeared to find some encouragement from a better-than-expected report on retail sales. The Commerce Department's reading on March sales, which showed a modest 0.2 percent rise after February's 0.6 percent decline, appeared to quell some unease about the economy. Excluding a 1.1 percent rise at gasoline stations, though, retail sales would have been flat last month.</br></br>Ryan Detrick, senior technical strategist at Schaeffer's Investment Research, said many investors are holding off on major moves ahead of corporate results and economic figures on inflation due later in the week.