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October 10, 2012

Alcoa and Chevron lead Dow Jones average down

From The Associated Press

NEW YORK — The prospect of weaker earnings for Alcoa and Chevron pulled the Dow Jones industrial average down early Wednesday.

Alcoa, the aluminum company, beat Wall Street earnings estimates on Tuesday night but cut its demand expectation for the year, mostly because of a slowdown in China. Its stock fell 31 cents Wednesday to $8.82.

Chevron, the country’s second-largest oil company, warned late Tuesday that slumping oil prices and production would cause earnings to be “substantially lower.” It blamed Hurricane Isaac for disrupting production at a Mississippi refinery.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court also refused to block a $19 billion judgment levied against Chevron by an Ecuadorian court for pollution in the Amazon. Chevron’s stock sank $3.21 to $114.13.

The Dow was down 63 points to 13,410 shortly after 10 a.m. Alcoa was the biggest loser among the 30 stocks that make up the average. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell two points to 1,437. The Nasdaq lost one point to 3,065.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury rose to 1.74 percent, up from 1.71 percent late Tuesday.

The Dow and S&P 500 are down more than 1 percent for the week. The Nasdaq has lost more than 2 percent.

Toyota Motor Corp. sank 1 percent after the carmaker recalled a total of 7.4 million vehicles worldwide for a for a faulty power-window switch, the latest in a series of recalls for Toyota.

The recall announced Wednesday affects more than a dozen models produced from 2005 through 2010. Toyota’s stock dropped 88 cents to $75.18.

 

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