Gloomy Day for Street Stocks

Bleak forecasts from Texas Instruments and Sun Microsystems pushed stocks down today, though a settlement of Lehman Brothers' credit default swaps was completed without major fallout, giving analysts some hope the credit crunch will be fixed. But don’t despair. “If the total amount of losses is less than the market is expecting, we could see a resumption of an upward trend that could take the Dow back above 10,000 in a short period of time,” Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Avalon Partners, told Market Watch. The S&P dropped 3.08 percent and the Nasdaq 4.14 percent, while the Dow closed down 231.77 points, to 9,033.66. Leading the declines were Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and Citigroup, which was downgraded to a sell by Goldman Sachs.