Dow Falls 44 Points On Gillette Warning
Gillette provided the latest sobering news for a giddy stock market today, sending prices lower with a warning that it will fall short of analysts' expectations for first-quarter earnings.</br></br>Gillette's announcement deflated the rally that had sent the Dow Jones industrial average to a record high Monday. The Dow fell 43.84 points today to close at 9963.49.</br></br>Broader market indicators were mostly lower, although the Dow sustained the sharpest losses. Barry Hyman, analyst at Ehrenkrantz King Nussbaum, said Gillette's bad news illustrated the recent split between the fortunes of the blue-chip companies and the Internet upstarts.</br></br>"This is a two-tiered market," he said. "It has been for quite some time, and as long as the Gillettes, the Cokes, keep coming out with warnings, it will remain so."</br></br>While the blue chips propelled the Dow past 10,000 for the first time in recent weeks, the market has appeared extremely vulnerable to signs of weakness from the corporate giants. Today, after Gillette said weakness in its Latin American business will cause it to miss analysts' expectations by 1 cent per share, its stock fell 7 3/4, to 50.