Blue Chips Drop 77.50; Bonds Climb ---- Decline, Led by Banks, Seen as Pause in Rally
Investors caught their breath after an eight-day Wall Street rampage, pushing stocks down and bonds up in what many traders viewed as a temporary pause in the stock rally.</br></br>The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 77.50, or 0.86%, to 8897.96. Sharp gains by technology stocks including Dell Computer and Internet-related stocks pushed the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index up 4.49, or 0.24%, to 1861.05.</br></br>Treasury bonds bounced back after taking a beating during last week's push toward stocks, and the dollar gained. The 30-year bellwether Treasury bond gained 1 13/32, or $14.0625 per $1,000 bond, pulling the yield (which moves opposite to the price) back to 5.288%. The bond market and most banks are closed tomorrow for Veterans Day, although the stock market remains open.</br></br>"It was a light-volume day where you just saw some profit-taking in stocks," said Robert Harrington, co-head of listed block trading at PaineWebber.</br></br>William Meehan, chief market analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald, noted that bond investors worried last week that the Federal Reserve might not cut interest rates this month; he said that worry spread to stock investors this week.