Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.

Dow off 89.7;
Nasdaq falls 124.56

Associated Press

NEW YORK -- Stocks tumbled today after Abby Joseph Cohen, one of Wall Street's most famously bullish analysts, recommended that clients shift some of their investments from stock to cash. Technology shares, which Cohen singled out as having little room for further growth, led the decline. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 89.74 to close at 10,936.11.

The Nasdaq index dropped 124.56, or 2.5 percent, to close at 4,834.00. The S&P 500 declined 16.13 to 1,507.73.

Decliners beat advancers by a 5-to-4 margin on the New York Stock Exchange, with 1,353 up, 1,654 down and 468 unchanged. NYSE volume totaled 950.94 million shares vs. 880.95 million yesterday. The NYSE composite index slipped 3.68 to 645.46; the American Stock Exchange index lost 7.36 to 1,016.51; and the Russell 2000 index 14.61 to 559.04.

The 30-year bond price slipped 1/32 point, or 31 cents per $1,000 in market value; its yield slipped 1 basis point to 5.97 percent.

Cohen, the chief market strategist for Goldman Sachs, set the tone for the selloff after she pared her firm's recommended weighting for stocks. Cohen now recommends clients keep 65 percent of their holdings in stock, down from 70 percent previously. She said clients should put 5 percent of their assets in cash, up from zero.

"It's not that she became bearish; she just became a little less bullish," said Larry Wachtel, market strategist at Prudential Securities. "In a market as extended as this, that's all it takes to cause a little shakeout."