Selling Continues Right Up To Closing Bell

"Wall Street capped off a brutal day with a final bit of ugliness as selling picked up in the late afternoon.
The S&P 500 tumbled 2.9%. It undercut the lows it hit during the March and August downturns and is now at its lowest level since September 2006. The Nasdaq closed down 2% after taking out its August low intraday. Meanwhile, the Dow plunged 2.5%, while the NYSE composite gave up 2.8%.
Preliminary readings show volume was much lower on the Nasdaq than it had been on Wednesday. But it was a bit higher on the NYSE.
Declining stocks outnumbered advancing stocks 13-to-2 on the NYSE and nearly 4-to-1 on the Nasdaq.
Losses spread across a range of industries. Of IBD's 197 industry groups only four registered gains — Diversified Operations, Retail-Discount & Variety, Bldg-Residential/Commercial and Retail-Drug Stores.
Even with today's modest advances, many of the retail and building stocks are still trading well below their old highs.
A number of former leading stocks are breaking down. They include names like Apple AAPL, CF Industries CF, Mosaic MOS, GFI Group (NASDAQ:GFIG) GFIG and BHP Billiton (NYSE:BHP) BHP — all of which suffered nasty drops today as well.
3 p.m. Update: Wall Street So Far Not Impressed With Stimulus Talk"

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