Stocks Retreat In Jittery Market

Stocks tumbled again Friday, dragging the Dow industrials as much as 183 points lower and reminding investors of the frightening two-day slide that preceded the Black Monday crash almost exactly 10 years ago.

A late wave of bargain-hunting repaired much of the damage, with the Dow Jones industrial average halving its loss and closing at 7,847.03, down 91.85 for the day and 198.18 for the week.

Broader stock measures also recovered from more staggering losses, including what would have been a record one-day slide for the technology-heavy Nasdaq market.

The market’s downturn has come amid a crescendo of jitters about inflation, corporate profits and a potential trade war, all of which have been exacerbated by the blare of media reports about Sunday being the 10th anniversary of the stock market crash of Oct. 19, 1987.

Aside from the eerie timing, however, there are few parallels to be drawn between then and now, analysts insist. Even with the sharp retreat, the Dow is still up more than 21 percent this year.

“To look for any sign in today’s price action vs. 10 years ago is a reach,” said Charles White, portfolio manager at Avatar Associates. “This is the wall of worry that we must climb.”

At one point during the session, declining issues outnumbered advancers by more than a 6-to-1 margin on the New York Stock Exchange. By the close, the gap had narrowed to less than 4-to-1.

Technology shares led Friday’s decline after Sun Microsystems and Seagate Technology weighed in late Thursday with the latest in a stream of disappointing profit reports from key players in that group.

Sun skidded 3-15/16 to 38-3/8 as the most active Nasdaq issue. Seagate, a leading manufacturer of computer disk drives, fell 5-5/16 to 32 as the second most active NYSE issue after Compaq Computer, which fell 3-3/4 to 69-1/2. And IBM, which reports its results on Monday, fell 4-7/16 to 95-7/16 as the Dow’s biggest decliner.

“The response to these earnings reports is just unbelievable. Certainly there should be some selloff, but it struck me that the whole thing was a bit overdone,” said A. Marshall Acuff Jr., equity strategist at Smith Barney. The markets were also pressured early Friday by news of potentially inflationary increases in industrial production and housing construction during September.

The Nasdaq composite index, which was down more than 53 points Friday afternoon, fell 32.81 to close at 1,666.85.

The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock list fell 11.06 to 944.17, halving an earlier loss of more than 23 points, and the NYSE composite index fell 5.73 to 496.57.

NYSE volume totaled a hefty 623.25 million shares as of 4 p.m., up from 595.98 million on Thursday. Nasdaq volume totaled 921.83 million shares, the second biggest tally ever.

Overseas, Tokyo’s Nikkei stock average fell 1.3 percent, Frankfurt’s DAX index fell 1.4 percent, and London’s FT-SE 100 fell 0.5 percent.