Major Averages Close In The Red After Seeing Morning Strength

(RTTNews) - After seeing modest strength in morning trading, stocks came under pressure over the course of the trading day on Tuesday. With the downturn, the tech-heavy Nasdaq pulled back further off the fifteen-year closing high set last Friday.

While many of the major sectors ended the day showing only modest moves, considerable weakness was visible among electronic storage stocks. Reflecting the weakness in the storage sector, the NYSE Arca Disk Drive Index dropped by 1.2 percent.

NetApp (NTAP), EMC Corp. (EMC), and Western Digital (WDC) turned in some of the storage sector's worst performances on the day.

Utilities stocks also came under pressure over the course of the session amid concerns about interest rates, resulting in a 1.2 percent loss by the Dow Jones Utilities Average.

Trucking, telecom, and steel stocks also moved to the downside on the day, while housing stocks saw some strength on the heels of upbeat new home sales data.

The major averages saw further downside going into the close, ending the session at their worst levels of the day. The Dow fell 104.90 points or 0.6 percent to 18,011.14, the Nasdaq slid 16.25 points or 0.3 percent to 4,994.73 and the S&P 500 dropped 12.92 points or 0.6 percent to 2,091.50.