- Commentary -

October 22, 2009 (FinancialWire) (By Philip Holmes) — Stocks ended down on Wednesday as a late selloff reversed earlier gains. Souring sentiment on financials led the plunge, but troubling news from Boeing (NYSE: BA) and Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) didn’t help, either.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed at 9,949.36, down by 92.12 points, while the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index dropped 9.66 points, to finish at 1,081.40. The Nasdaq composite index lost 12.74 points on the day, to end at 2,150.73.

Leading the banks down in late-day trading was Wells Fargo, whose shares lost 5.1% after Rochdale Research analyst Richard Bove downgraded his rating on the company to sell. Other banks took big hits as well, including Citi (down 2.3%), JPMorgan (down 3%) and Bank of America (down 2.9%).

Airframer Boeing reported a worse-than-expected loss for the quarter, and investors responded by dropping the share price by 2.4%. Retail giant Wal-Mart also reported, telling investors that it expects a tough holiday season. WMT dropped 2.1% on the day.

Investors also saw the latest Beige Book report from the Fed. The report is in line with current Fed policy, showing an absence of inflation pressures and hailing a modest recovery underway. The Fed’s Open Market Committee next meets on November 22.

Nothing really surprising here. Wall Street watchers weren’t expecting a stellar earnings season, and so far they haven’t been too disappointed. Speculation surrounds just how overpriced the market got in recent months, and how big a hit stocks would take once investors realized that “V” isn’t in the economic vocabulary these days.

[Go to http://www.financialwire.net/?s=philip+holmes to see more commentaries by Philip Holmes.]

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Today in History: Last known hanging for witchcraft in the United States took place in 1692. Russia founded a colony on Kodiak Island, Alaska, in 1784. One thousand meters (3,200 feet) above Paris, André-Jacques Garnerin made the first recorded parachute jump in 1797. Sam Houston was inaugurated as the first president of the Republic of Texas in 1836. The first rugby match under floodlights took place in 1878 in Salford, between Broughton and Swinton. Toastmasters International was founded in 1924. In East Liverpool, Ohio, in 1934, notorious bank robber Pretty Boy Floyd was shot and killed by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents. Xerox introduced the copy machine in 1938. The former Soviet Union detonated its first nuclear bomb in 1949. In 1962, US President John F. Kennedy announced that American spy planes had discovered Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba, and that he had ordered a naval “quarantine” of the island nation. The Supremes became in 1966 the first all-female music group to attain a No. 1 selling album (The Supremes A’ Go-Go). Red Dye No. 4 was banned in 1976 by the US Food and Drug Administration after the discovery that it causes tumors in the bladders of dogs.

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