Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) led stocks lower on Friday, but the major indexes still ended the week with 6% gains.
Amazon shares lost 4.3% on news that the company is closing three distribution centers for efficiency reasons. Goldman Sachs analyst James Mitchell removed the company from his Conviction List but kept a Buy rating on the stock, saying the closures likely aren’t related to a drop in demand. Still, with the end of the first quarter just days away, jittery investors were quick to take profits.
Research in Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) escaped the decline, ending the day little changed ahead of its earnings report next week. Micron (NYSE: MU), which will also report its quarterly results next week, slipped 1%.
The Nasdaq ended the day 2.6% lower, with Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL), Dell (NASDAQ: DELL), IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Sun (NASDAQ: JAVA) losing around 4% each.
Accenture (NYSE: ACN) tumbled 13% after lowering its profit outlook.
Quantum (NYSE: QTM) shares nearly doubled on news of $100 million in financing from EMC (NYSE: EMC).
AMD (NYSE: AMD) and Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) both fell ahead of the introduction of Intel’s Nehalem chip.
The Nasdaq fell 41 to 1545, the S&P 500 lost 17 to 815, and the Dow tumbled 148 to 7776. Volume declined to 6.53 billion shares on the NYSE, and rose to 2.12 billion on the Nasdaq. Decliners led by a 28-9 margin on the NYSE, and 20-7 on the Nasdaq. Downside volume was 86% on the NYSE, and 78% on the Nasdaq. New highs-new lows were 12-86 on the NYSE, and 13-24 on the Nasdaq.
