NEW YORK -- Stocks fell modestly today, steadying from the wild gyrations of recent days, but extending a sharp retreat from record highs set less than two weeks ago. Dow off 19.82
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 19.82 to 8,914.96, the lowest finish in more than a month and 423 points below the closing record of 9,337.97 set just eight sessions earlier on July 17.
IBM Corp., fueled by an analyst's earnings upgrade, rose $2.38 to $127.81 to cushion the Dow's fall.
The Standard & Poor's 500 fell 5.03 to 1,125.21, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index fell 15.04 to 1,881.49.
Decliners outnumbered advancers by a 6-to-5 margin on the New York Stock Exchange, with 1,357 up, 1,646 down and 530 unchanged.
NYSE volume totaled 634.70 million shares, down from yesterday's 698.86 million.
The NYSE composite index fell 2.07 to 567.42, and the American Stock Exchange composite index rose 1.17 to 707.86.
The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies fell 1.35 to 426.19.
The benchmark 30-year Treasury bond fell 11/32, or $3.44 per $1,000 bond, pushing its yield up 2 basis points to 5.76 percent. The two-year note's yield rose 2 basis points to 5.48 percent.
Meanwhile, the Commerce Department reported today that factory orders for big-ticket items fell 0.2 percent in June, the fourth drop this year, as American manufacturers struggled to cope with battered export markets in Asia.
The data also showed that May's decline was 3.3 percent, even steeper than a prior estimate of 2.7 percent.
Overseas, Tokyo's Nikkei stock index rose 0.3 percent.