Friday’s Market Recap: Bank Of America Led Overall Downward Trend

The markets lost strong momentum from earlier in the week and closed down for the second day in a row.  The Dow Jones (^DJI) lost 1.65% to settle at $7278.38 while the S&P (^GSPC) was down 1.98% to settle at $768.54.  The NASDAQ (^IXIC) was hurt today down 1.77%.  Gold and oil both dropped today after yesterdays strong gains, they settled at $956.2 and $51.06 respectively.

The NASDAQ fall today was led by semiconductors, who were down due to a preliminary report released by Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International, which said that orders for North American chips fell 5%.  Leading chip makers Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) and Texas Instruments (NYSE:TXN) were both down over 3% as a result.  Intel and the rest of the semiconductor industry have been hurt due to poor demand for their chips and are struggling in the economic downturn.

Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) led the overall downward trend for the market today, down over 10%.  Bank of America made headlines today when it was reported that they were involved in the $15.3 million markdowns at Merrill Lynch in the fourth quarter of 2008.  BofA said that Merrill determined the markdowns, but that they did have access to Merrill’s financial documents at the time.

Johnson and Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) was one of the few stocks that was up today benefiting from an FDA recommendation of the approval of JNJ’s anticlotting drug, Xarelto.  If the drug passes it will be the first oral blood thinner approved in 50 years.  JNJ also benefited today from an upgrade by UBS from “neutral” to “buy” bolstering the positive news about Xarelto.

Disclosure: The fund the author is associated with is long JNJ.

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