Retreat at Wall St. open

U.S. stocks lower, with techs pacing decline, as investors fret about Merrill, housing sector.


NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- U.S. stocks retreated at Wednesday's open after Merrill Lynch took a larger-than-expected writedown, leading to more concern about the housing sector.

The Dow Jones industrial average dipped 0.2 percent. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index slipped by 0.9 percent. The Standard & Poor's 500 index lost 0.4 percent.

Among stocks in the news Wednesday: Merrill Lynch (Charts, Fortune 500), Boeing (Charts, Fortune 500), General Dynamics (Charts, Fortune 500), Children's Place (Charts), BP (Charts) and ConocoPhillips (Charts, Fortune 500). Top of page

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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.