The largest drop in retail sales on record sent the markets tumbling during the midday with the Dow slumping 304 points to 8532. Nasdaq plummeted 66 points to 1531.
On the upside
Analyst firm Gartner named Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) to its "Leaders Quadrant" for Midrange Enterprise Disk Arrays saying that Dell's EqualLogic product line is easy to install and offers automatic load balancing among multiple nodes.Bargain hunters lifted shares of Crocs (Nasdaq: CROX), which tumbled yesterday after the plastic shoe maker reported sharp third quarter losses and warned of more losses in the fourth quarter.
On the downside
MedCath (Nasdaq: MDTH) blamed higher expenses for lower fourth quarter earnings that fell fall short of expectations.
Solera Holdings (NYSE: SLH) will sell 4.5 million shares of common stock to raise $90 million.
Nokia (NYSE: NOK) blamed the global economic downturn for lowering its fourth quarter guidance.
In the broad market, declining issues outpaced advancers by a margin of more than 4 to 1 on the NYSE and by nearly 4 to 1 on Nasdaq. The Russell 2000 which tracks small cap stocks plummeted 25 points to 466.
