(Updates to close)
By Ellis Mnyandu
NEW YORK, March 27 (Reuters) - U.S. stocks fell for a
second day on Thursday as soft results from technology
bellwether Oracle Corp <ORCL.O> fed worry about a cutback in
business spending, while bank shares fell on fears of another
major casualty in the sector.
Oracle's weaker-than-expected revenue and cautious
comments from its chief financial officer, knocked the
software maker's shares down 7.2 percent. That triggered a
widespread sell-off of technology shares, including Apple Inc
<AAPL.O>, which slid 3.3 percent.
Rumors that Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc <LEH.N> could
suffer a fate similar to the near collapse of Bear Stearns
<BSC.N> pushed Lehman's shares down 8.9 percent. Lehman called
the rumors "totally unfounded." [].
A 3.1 percent slide in Google Inc's <GOOG.O> shares after
Lehman slashed its price target on the Web search leader added
to anxieties about tech stocks.
"Oracle came out with results that were a little light and
their forward guidance was a little cautious," said James
Rosenthal, head trader at Punk Ziegel & Co. in New York.
"Oracle is a very large company. It sells into a lot of
different spaces, and if they are a little cautious and
companies are waiting to make spending decisions, that will
affect all businesses going forward for the next three to six
months, and that's why techs are weak today."
The Dow Jones industrial average <> slid 120.40
points, or 0.97 percent, to end at 12,302.46. The Standard &
Poor's 500 Index <.SPX> fell 15.37 points, or 1.15 percent, to
finish at 1,325.76. The Nasdaq Composite Index <> slumped
43.53 points, or 1.87 percent, to close at 2,280.83.
Shares of Boeing Co <BA.N> were the top drag on the Dow,
falling 2.7 percent to close at $74.22 on the NYSE after
Citigroup cut its price target on the stock to $68 from $78.
Trading was volatile and indexes gyrated widely until the
last hour of trading when financial stocks tacked on more
losses, causing the market to end right at its sesson lows.
Oracle shares dropped to $19.43 on the Nasdaq, while
shares of Apple, the computer and iPod maker, tumbled to
$140.25.
Shares of BlackBerry devices maker Research In Motion Ltd
<RIMM.O> slumped 5.1 percent to $112.15 on Nasdaq.
Google shares ended down 3.1 percent at $444.08 after
Lehman Brothers cuts its price target by 10 percent on the
stock to $580. Chip maker Intel Corp <INTC.O> was another
high-profile tech casualty, along with technology services
company International Business Machines Corp <IBM.N>.
Intel shares fell 3.5 percent to close at $21.09 on Nasdaq
and IBM shares slid 1.2 percent to finish at $115.52 on the
NYSE. IBM ranked second among the Dow's biggest decliners.
Shares of Lehman Brothers, the fourth-largest U.S.
investment bank, closed at $38.71, down $3.78 on the NYSE.
Earlier, Lehman's stock fell as low as $37.14.
Merrill Lynch shares fell 5.7 percent to $41.90 after
Sanford C. Bernstein, a brokerage, said the bank's
first-quarter results would likely be the weakest among major
U.S. securities firms.
Separately, an influential bank analyst, Meredith Whitney
at Oppenheimer & Co, said she expected Merrill to lose $3 a
share in the first quarter, and tripled her projected
write-down for Merrill to $6 billion from $2 billion.
Among the financial sector's other major decliners were
Bank of America Corp <BAC.N>, the No. 2 U.S. bank by assets,
down 3 percent at $38.64, and JPMorgan Chase & Co <JPM.N>, the
No. 3 U.S. bank, down 2.8 percent at $42.86.
Before Wall Street's open)ng bell, the Commerce Department
said U.S. corporate profits fell 3.3 percent in the fourth
quarter in a report that also confirmed the U.S. economy,
measured by gross domestic product, grew at a meager annual
pace of 0.6 percent in the same period. [] GDP is
the measure of all goods and services produced within U.S.
borders.
(Editing by Jan Paschal)
