BRIEFING.COM] The stock market made an effort Monday to extend last week’s big gains. It scored some success early on, but buyers eventually backed off and the major indices closed the session with modest losses.The technology sector (+0.3%) provided the early leadership. Brokerage upgrades of Motorola (MOT 18.05, +0.16) and EMC Corp. (EMC 20.51, +1.48), and the outperformance of Microsoft (MSFT 29.08, +0.43) ahead of tonight’s release of the popular “Halo 3″ videogame and amid media reports that it is interested in taking a stake in social-networking startup Facebook, helped drive the upside.
The tech sector eventually lost some steam as leading names saw larger gains get pared in conjunction with a broader market pullback that followed after news hit the wires at 11:00 ET that the UAW launched a nationwide strike at General Motors (GM 34.74, -0.20) plants for the first time in 37 years.
The GM-UAW divide was the story of the session. Although prior reports had indicated substantive progress had been made in their negotiations, a newsconference held by the UAW to discuss the strike cast serious doubt on those reports.
GM, which was up 3.9% early in the session on the expectation an agreement would be reached ahead of an 11:00 ET strike deadline, finished the day down 0.6%.
Not surprisingly, the auto parts makers comprised a pocket of weakness in the broader market. Homebuilders and airlines did, too. The former traded lower after Standard Pacific (SPF 7.05, -1.05) said it eliminated its quarterly dividend as part of a plan to reduce debt.
Falling crude prices (-$1.03 to $80.59) weren’t much help to the airlines, which got clipped after AMR Corp. (AMR 20.77, -3.49) provided disappointing revenue guidance for the third quarter. The dip in crude prices came after a storm threat in the Gulf of Mexico over the weekend was averted.
Overall, the financial sector (-1.2%) was the biggest drag on the market following a Reuters report Deutsche Bank (DB 126.34, -2.94) might have to take a big writedown of its leveraged loan commitments.
The Treasury market was essentially flat ahead of some key economic data tomorrow that includes the Existing Home Sales and Consumer Confidence reports. The dollar, meanwhile, continued to languish, showing no real improvement against a basket of other major world currencies.
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