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From Briefing.com: 4:30 pm : Broad-based selling dropped stocks for sizable losses Monday. The slide found support at last week's lows, though.

Action was a bit choppy in the early going, but with neither concerted nor clear leadership sellers were able to claim control. Materials stocks were hit with the worst - they dropped 1.4% as steel stocks sank 2.4% and shares of diversified metals and miners dropped 2.1%.

Tech stocks were among the heaviest drags, though, given that the tech is the heaviest by market weight. Its 1.1% loss was largely due to weakness in semiconductor stocks (-1.6%) and semiconductor equipment stocks (-1.9%).

Financials had shown early strength, but faltered as the broader market began to roll over. It ended the day 0.7% lower with considerable weakness in shares of American Express (AXP 39.09, -2.73), which will challenge an antitrust lawsuit by the government. Shares of AXP endured their worst single-session slide since January to settle at their lowest level in three months. Visa (V 73.24, -0.08) and MasterCard (MA 222.64, -2.14) both plan to settle, but each saw its shares settle lower.

The rest of the day's headlines revolved around merger and acquisition activity, which included news that Sanofi-Aventis (SNY 32.87, -0.25) offered to acquire Genzyme (GENZ 71.01, +0.13) for $69 per share, Microsemi (MSCC 18.30, +1.19) will pay $20.88 for each share of Actel (ACTL 20.95, +4.93), and Dynamex (DDMX 21.05, +5.74) will be acquired by Greenbriar Equity for $21.25 per share. Sara Lee (SLE 14.40, +0.97) allegedly rejected a takeover bid from KKR.

There was only a light dose of data today. It didn't do much for traders.

Factory orders for August fell 0.5%, which is a bit steeper than the 0.4% decline that had been expected. Orders for the prior month were revised higher to reflect a 0.5% increase.

Pending home sales increased a stronger-than-expected 4.3% month-over-month. The consensus among economists polled by Briefing.com had called for just a 1.0% increase. Data for the prior month was revised downward to reflect a 4.5% increase, though.

Despite weakness in the stock market, Treasuries really didn't get much support. The benchmark 10-year Note finished up just nine ticks and the 30-year Bond edged just four ticks higher. Their yields now stand just below 2.48% and 3.71%, respectively.

Lackluster trading volume resumed as fewer than a billion shares were traded on the NYSE. The lack of participation suggests that their may not have been much belief in the stock market's mover lower. To be fair, though, share volume was anemic all the way up to the stock market's multi-month highs, which were set just last week.

Advancing Sectors: (None)
Declining Sectors: Materials (-1.4%), Energy (-1.1%), Tech (-1.1%), Industrials (-1.1%), Health Care (-1.0%), Financials (-0.7%), Consumer Staples (-0.4%), Utilities (-0.3%), Consumer Discretionary (-0.2%)
Unchanged: Telecom DJ30 -78.41 NASDAQ -26.23 SP500 -9.21 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 696/1.92 bln/1936 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 821/943 mln/2160

4:04PM MEMC Elec subsidiary SunEdison sells solar power plant to First Reserve (WFR) 11.76 -0.20 : Co announces sale of a 70 megawatt photovoltaic power plant located in Northeast Italy, near the town of Rovigo. SunEdison and Banco Santander jointly developed and co-owned the Rovigo plant prior to this sale. The total price for the sale is expected to be ~276 mln Euro. As part of the project acquisition, First Reserve has made an initial payment of 46 mln Euro to SunEdison, with the balance to be paid upon interconnection of the plant, which is expected to occur by the end of the fourth quarter of 2010. First Reserve expects to close the long-term project debt financing for the project in the fourth quarter of 2010.

4:01PM MaxLinear lowers Q3 rev guidance below consensus; sees Q3 gross margin modestly higher than originally forecast (MXL) 11.36 +0.16 : Co lowers Q3 rev guidance to $18.4-18.6 mln from $20.0-20.5 mln vs. the $20.34 mln Thomson Reuters consensus. Co also announced that it expects Q3 gross margin percentage to be modestly higher than originally forecast. "Although we experienced quarter-over-quarter revenue growth, revenues in each of our consumer, cable, automotive, and mobile segments fell short of our beginning of the quarter estimates and our purchase order backlog at mid-quarter. As the quarter concluded, customers either reduced the amount of purchase orders within lead time or requested rescheduling of shipments. We believe that these shortfalls are related to the uncertainty in the current semiconductor market, leading us to revise our revenue guidance."

8:38AM Chipmos Technology unit entered into a settlement agreement with Spansion (IMOS) 1.28 : ChipMOS TECHNOLOGIES (Bermuda) entered into a settlement agreement with Spansion (SPSNQ) for its general unsecured claim on breach of contract and liquidated damages rights... Under the Agreement, the total amount of recognized damage on breach of contract and liquidated damages rights was US$135 million. Based on the Company's earlier disclosed information about this transaction on its January 14 and 26, 2010 press releases, ChipMOS Taiwan will be receiving approximately US$68 million from the above arrangement.

8:32AM Silicom Limited receives add on order from existing cumstomer; annual sales to this customer are expected to grow to $1.5 mln (SILC) 13.98 :

8:03AM Advanced Energy announces expansion of operations in Ontario, Canada (AEIS) 13.05 : Co announces a strategic expansion of its operations in Ontario, Canada. The expansion includes the creation of a new legal entity in Ontario, Canada to provide local support to its customers in the region

Micron Technology (MU) announced that Hitachi-LG Data Storage has selected co's 25-nanometer NAND as the flash memory solution for its new hybrid optical disk drive.