Homebuilders lower on poor fourth quarter

Wall Street was down on Friday and both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 looked set to end the week down as well, although the Nasdaq Composite was likely to notch a gain for the week. The Dow had lost 0.7 percent by midday to 12,388.96, down 0.6 on the week despite hitting a new all-time high on Wednesday. The S&P was 0.8 percent lower on the session so far and 0.7 percent lower for the week at 1,407.94. While the Nasdaq was 1.1 lower over the session at midday, to 2,425.36, it was still up 0.4 percent on the shortened week.

The oil sector performed particularly badly as crude oil prices dropped over the week. Chevron was 4.4 percent lower to $70.32, while ExxonMobil dropped 5.6 percent to $72.34. ConocoPhillips was down 7.8 percent to $66.35 as it dropped its marketing and refining margins for the fourth quarter. Marathon Oil fell 8.5 percent over the week to $84.60.

Homebuilders saw declines. KB Homes dropped 4.4 percent to $49.03. Lennar was 4.8 percent lower to $49.92 after it said it would probably see a loss in the fourth quarter.

Technology stocks did better for the most part, although Motorola dropped 7.8 percent on the week to $18.95 after it said that fourth quarter earnings would be below predictions due to slow mobile phone sales. Chipmaker Intel added 3 percent to $20.86. Cisco was up 3.1 percent to $28.19 on the announcement that it has bought an e-mail security company. Internet search engine Yahoo gained 7 percent to $27.32, while BMC Software added 7.6 percent to $34.65.

Home improvement retailers did not seem affected much by the drop in the home construction sector. While Home Depot held steady at $41.84 for the week, Lowes added 2.9 percent to $32.04.

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