’Net stocks
withstand selloff

NEW YORK -- Internet-related stocks continued to show some resiliency despite a broad market selloff at the start of trading today on Wall Street. Yahoo!, Amazon.com and America Online all pared their losses from earlier in the day.

For the overall market, broad-market indexes recovered most of their losses by the close of trading but the Dow Jones industrial average still finished the day down 125.12 points, or 1.32 percent, at 9,349.56.

Stocks throughout the world were lower after Brazil's devaluation of its currency.

On Wall Street, decliners led advancers by a 2-to-1 margin on the New York Stock Exchange, with 1,025 up, 2,114 down and 434 unchanged. NYSE volume totaled 929.94 million shares vs. 789.45 million yesterday.

The Standard & Poor's 500 fell 5.11 to 1,234.40. The technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index fell 3.94 to 2,316.81. The NYSE composite index fell 3.87 to 590.72, and the American Stock Exchange composite index lost 0.26 to 699.39. The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies dropped 2.51 to 424.85.

The Nasdaq and Standard & Poor's 500 composites both opened lower and sank in early trading, moved up into positive territory this afternoon, but sank back near the close.

In Nasdaq trading, Intel and Microsoft were higher on the day.

Most stocks tumbled at the open after the head of the Brazilian central bank, Gustavo Franco, resigned. His replacement, Francisco Lopes, immediately allowed the Brazilian currency, the real, to fall 8 percent against the dollar.