NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Let's play hangman! The catalyst for today's drop has five letters and begins with an "N" (see below). But the real issue is bigger. Where, oh where, has our revenue growth gone? We'll find out when earnings season arrives.

In the meantime, the Dow closed down 79.09 at 9,507.20, while the Nasdaq slid 15.19 to 1,873.43.

STOCK STUFF Trauma of the day...Nokia. The cell phone star said that its earnings would be helped by high consumer demand, but that price competition (mainly from Asian rivals) and the weak dollar (today, it fell to a three-week low against the euro) would hurt revenues. And as we all know, at a certain point, you need revenue growth to have earnings growth. The stock fell $1.09 to $15.98.

Speaking of competition, Big Pharma better watch its back. Generic drugmakers aren't powerless fly-by-nighters any more, and they're increasingly aggressive. Today, Canadian company Apotex launched a generic version of GlaxoSmithKline's Paxil despite still being mired in litigation with Glaxo.

In the weird world of drugmaking, that allowed another generic drugmaker, Pharmaceutical Resources, to launch its version of Paxil under a licensing agreement it has with Glaxo that enables it to sell the generic in the US once someone else has launched a product. Pharmaceutical Resources soared $8.40 to $67.55 on the news.

Blackberry mania continues. Research In Motion jumped $6.31 to $34.55 after announcing its earnings would be better than expected.

Talk about a happy meal: McDonalds added 24 cents to $23.59 after posting good comparable store sales results. Then again, this story is all about salads, and I'm sure not happy after eating only a salad.

ALMOST TWO YEARS LATER US District judge Alvin Hellerstein ruled that lawsuits against American, United, Boeing and others including the Port Authority and the World Trade Center related to September 11 can proceed. Among other things, the plaintiffs argued that negligent screening could have contributed to the tragedy and that Boeing could have built cockpit doors to keep the hijackers out.

The defendants protested that they couldn't guard against such suicidal crashes. But in his 49-page ruling, Hellerstein said that while it may be true that terrorists had never deliberately flown airplanes into buildings, "airlines reasonably could foresee that crashes causing death and destruction on the ground was a hazard that would arise should hijackers take control of a plane."

This decision, which was based on some 70 plaintiffs, could open the floodgates to another 1,700 or so who are deciding whether to sue or to seek compensation from the federal government. In the meantime, American, United and Boeing have all said that they will appeal the decision. "We continue to believe that we are not liable for the events that occurred that day," said American Airlines spokesman Todd Burke in a statement. Any resolution will take years.

Grasso speaks publicly about his pay! After the close, NYSE chairman Dick Grasso and Carl McCall, chairman of the compensation committee, held a news conference to discuss Grasso's $140 million pay package. Grasso has offered to forfeit $48 million in deferred compensation, but he has not offered to step down as some have hinted he should. Will this satisfy the calls for blood? Is the NYSE a Wall Street firm or a regulatory agency? Expect plenty of debate about these questions...

Slow or steady? SEC chairman Bill Donaldson lashed out at New York and Oklahoma for acting independently of federal regulators. "Unfortunately, there's been a politicization, if you will, of enforcement...this is very dangerous." But there are whispers that the SEC -- which may have known about this sleazy cottage industry of market timers and after hours traders, and probably knows everything there is to know about MCI/WorldCom -- plays it too safe...

The Federal Reserve says that non-financial debt (which excludes borrowing by banks, thrifts, and finance companies) grew at an adjusted annual rate of 12 percent in the second quarter. The major cause: The US government, which increased its borrowing at the fastest rate since the first quarter of 1983...

Schering-Plough agreed to pay $1 million to settle charges that it violated Regulation Fair Disclosure by revealing earnings news at an investor meeting that wasn't webcast; former CEO Richard Kogan agreed to pay $50,000. Don't cry for him. It was just a pittance of his $50 million retirement package...

More goings than comings -- International Paper CEO John Dillon announced his retirement, and Sun chief scientist Bill Joy (well known in some circles for a controversial article arguing that technology may make humans an endangered species) said he was going to move on to new challenges...

Choose your seer. Goldman's George Strachan downgraded most retail subsectors to "cautious" from "neutral" based on the strong stock performance year-to-date and worries about consumer spending. But Merrill Lynch says that retail stocks, and particularly growth retail stocks, should rise on a "Wall of Denial" -- in other words, in a perverse way, Goldman's skepticism is good news. Don't you love Wall Street? Don't answer that.

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