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Today's Market Update with...

Ron Romaine, Value Line's Senior Industry Analyst

November 20, 2009 - 4:51 PM ET

Following a generally down day in Europe, where the DJ Stoxx 600 fell .7%, Wall Street was in agreement. US stocks opened in the red and eased further until midday, whence they recovered somewhat to close at near the day's highs. The Dow Jones Industrials lost 14 points, to 10318; the S&P 500 gave up 3 and change, to 1091; the NASDAQ Composite was off 11, to 2146; the Russell 2000 small cap index eased a point, to 585; and the Value Line arithmetic index, the sole equally weighted benchmark, finished at 2124, down 8 points. For the week, the Dow slipped .5%. Leading the Dow decliners today were Caterpillar (CAT), General Electric (GE), and Cisco (CSCO), falling about a percent apiece. Merck (MRK), Pfizer (PFE), and Coca-Cola (KO) advanced 1% to 3.2%. NASDAQ losers featured Dell (DELL), down 10% on a poor report, followed by Illumina (ILMN), Hologics (HOLX), and News (NWSA), giving up 3.7% to 5%. Millicom (MICC), Research in Motion (RIMM), Expedia (EXPE), and Express Scripts (ESRX) rose 1.2% to 1.8%.

There were no economic data released today. The near-month crude oil contract declined four bits, to $76.90 a barrel, but gold climbed $9 to a new current-dollar high of $1150.80 an ounce.

Interest rates rose a fraction of a basis point, to 3.36% for the 10-year Treasury note and 4.30% for the 30-year bond.

Have safe and pleasant weekend.

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