Today’s close: down 4.65%
There’s a faint whistle from the air leaking out of investors’ hopes for 2009. Caterpillar started out slowly and slipped all day, shaving 2 bucks from Friday’s close while oil prices dipped yet again and traders anticipated more bad news from aluminum giant Alcoa, which delivered after the bell, saying it had lost a billion dollars in the last quarter. Just for fun, the financials got beat up again, too. More on Cat at Yahoo Finance.
The bloodletting was less, well, bloody among the broader indexes, which were all down nevertheless: Dow, minus-1.46%; SP 500, minus-2.26%; Nasdaq, minus-2.09%. More at Market Watch.
A couple scraps of good news: Caterpillar had just a touch more volume today at 9.1 million shares compared to 8.9 million on Friday, so the selling conviction is not super strong; and Cat is still up 29 percent from its 52-week low of 31.95 on Oct. 24.