More from Briefing.com: It was some day on Wall Street. The Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P 500 were down 460, 111, and 57 points, respectively, at their lows for the session. When the closing bell rang, they were down 173, 12, and 15 points. You know it was bad when those closing levels were talked about by some as looking pretty good "all things considered."
There was certainly plenty to consider today, too.
The 10-yr note yield plunged as many as 34 basis points to 1.86%; the CBOE Volatility Index spiked above 30, and both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite turned negative for the year at one point.
That all happened on the back of weaker than expected retail sales, PPI, and Empire Manufacturing data, which piqued concerns the weakness abroad is spilling over to the U.S. Layer in added concerns about the spread of Ebola and the unwinding of a merger speculation premium after AbbVie (ABBV 54.63, +0.50) said it will reconsider a recommendation to its shareholders to vote in favor of the merger with Shire Pharmaceuticals (SHPQ 170.49, -74.08), and it was an invitation to sell stocks at the open.
And sell they did, taking out more technical support levels and triggering programmatic selling in the process. Concerns that margin calls were being made and that some forced selling might be occurring only worsened things.
The trading action was a reversal of Tuesday's session when stocks rallied early and sold off late. On Wednesday, they plummeted early and rebounded late on a sense that they had gotten oversold.
The 10-yr yield settled the day at 2.14%, the VIX ended just above 26.00, and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite both reclaimed a position in positive territory for the year. Strikingly, the Russell 2000, which has paced the market's corrective action of late, gained 1.0% and finished Wednesday roughly 3.0% off its lows for the session.
The turn in the small caps will be watched carefully as a potential sign that the selling pressure in the broader market has hit, or is near, an exhaustion point for the time being. That view, however, won't gain any credence until there is follow through from buyers over the course of multiple sessions.
Looking at the S&P 500 information technology sector on Wednesday, it had a similarly wild day, declining as much as 3.0% at one point before ending the session down "just" 0.8%.
Taking into account that Apple (AAPL 97.56, -1.19) declined 1.2%, even though Morgan Stanley added the stock to its "Best Ideas" list, and Intel (INTC 31.28, -0.86) dropped 2.7% after its better than expected earnings report, it can be said that things were better for the information technology sector than they appeared at first blush.
Half of the sectors 66 components finished with gains, including Adobe Systems (ADBE 62.20, +1.32), Altera (ALTR 31.53, +0.68), Analog Devices (ADI 44.13, +0.67), Electronic Arts (EA 33.38, +0.65), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ 32.80, +0.56), Juniper Networks (JNPR 19.13, +0.36), Lam Research (LRCX 69.93, +2.20), NVIDIA (NVDA 17.43, +0.26), Texas Instruments (TXN 42.76, +0.45), and Xilinx (XLNX 37.58, +0.68), all of which gained more than 1.0%.
Most stocks, and particularly the semiconductor names, were rebounding from sizable losses of late. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, which was down 12.4% for the month entering Wednesday's trading, finished up 0.5%.
Hewlett-Packard's boost was helped along by the company's announcement that it will resume its share repurchase program and reaffirmed its FY14 and FY15 EPS guidance. On a related note, Reuters ran an article, citing people briefed on the matter, that said HP and EMC Corp. (EMC 27.37, -0.34) have ended merger talks.
In other news, Qualcomm (QCOM 71.20, -0.66) announced the acquisition of CSR plc (CSRE 54.74, +12.79) for $2.5 billion in cash, JPMorgan Chase upgraded Micron (MU 27.54, +0.15) to Overweight from Neutral, and Linear Technology (LLTC 38.69, -0.34) dipped 0.9% after reporting in-line first quarter results and issuing second quarter revenue guidance below analysts' expectations.
Postscript: After the close, eBay (EBAY 50.24, -0.35) reported third quarter earnings slightly ahead of expectations but issued fourth quarter revenue guidance of $4.85 billion to $4.95 billion that was light of estimates.
Shares of EBAY were trading 3.0% lower as of this posting. Netflix (NFLX 448.59, -0.53) shares, on the other hand, were down 119 points, or 26%, after the company reported a lower number of net additions for the third quarter and issued fourth quarter guidance below analysts' current expectations.
Look for other momentum stocks to be pressured in early trading on Thursday by the sell-off in NFLX.
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