Traders cash in winnings after week's huge gains

ByABC News
May 7, 2009, 5:21 PM

NEW YORK -- Investors locked in profits Thursday following big gains earlier in the week. Weak demand at a Treasury bond auction also touched off worries about the government's ability to raise funds to fight the recession.

Upbeat reports on the job market and retail sales initially sent stocks higher but the gains eroded by midmorning as traders asked "What's next?" and cut back their holdings following the 4.8% gain so far this week in the Standard & Poor's 500 index.

"This is a market that is starting to bake in a lot of positive surprises," said Craig Peckham, a market strategist at Jefferies & Co.

Major stock indicators all fell at least 1%, including the Dow Jones industrial average.The Nasdaq composite fell more than 2%.

Jitters about weak demand at a government debt auction fanned the market's pullback. Bond prices tumbled following an auction of 30-year Treasury bills in which the government had to pay greater interest than expected. That was worrisome to traders because it could signal that it will become harder for Washington to finance its ambitious economic recovery plans.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note jumped to 3.28% from 3.16% late Wednesday. The yield on the 30-year long bond jumped to 4.27% from 4.11% Wednesday.

The pullback came ahead of the formal release of results from the government's stress tests of bank balance sheets, after the closing bell. News reports have already given investors a decent idea of what to expect so analysts aren't predicting big surprises.

The slide in stocks, which erased Wednesday's advance, followed a massive two-month rally that brought the S&P 500 index up more than 30% from 12-year lows reached in early March.

At the close of trading, the Dow fell 12, or 1.2%, to 8,410, a day after the blue chips jumped 102 points to close above the 8,500 level for the first time in four months. The index is down only 4.2% for the year.

The S&P 500 index fell 12, or 1.3%, to 907, and the Nasdaq composite index fell 43, or 2.4%, to 1,716.