The bears certainly controlled the day today, as well as the whole week. Stocks were under significant pressure once again today as more bad news from the mortgage mess worried investors. It was a very volatile day of trading again today, where there were repeated failed attempts to rally, and a massive rush of selling in the last 45 minutes of the day. The Dow finished the day lower by 224 points. The S&P 500 lost 21 points. The Nasdaq was once again the worst 
performer, losing 68 points on the day. The Dow and S&P lost about 4% for the week, while the Nasdaq fell about 6%.
It was a mirror image of yesterday with the tech stocks plunging lower on the day. Dell Inc. (Nasdaq:DELL) lost 4.31% to lead the big cap tech stocks lower. Baidu.com Inc. (Nasdaq:BIDU) plunged another 4.17% today, capping off a terrible week for that stock. The solar stocks that outperformed the market so nicely yesterday gave back a lot of ground today. MEMC Electronic Materials (NYSE:WFR) shed 8.47% today and First Solar (Nasdaq:FSLR) lost 7.83%. Juniper Networks (Nasdaq:JNPR) lost 4.85% to finish off a week of significant losses for it.
Techs may have been the weakest spot, but they were far from the only losing stocks today. The retailers continued to get crushed today, with numerous retail names hitting new 52 week lows today. J.C. Penney (NYSE:JCP) fell 6.72% to hit a new 52 week low today. JCP has fallen from $68 just a month ago, to under $47 now. Dollar Tree Stores (Nasdaq:DLTR) plunged 9.62% on heavy volume today. Up until a couple weeks ago, most thought that the high end consumer would be fine, but the high end retailers have been crushed this week. Tiffany and Company (NYSE:TIF) fell 6.01% on more than double their average volume.
Construction related stocks were also weak today. Terex Corporation (NYSE:TEX) fell 4.31% and has now lost about 30% in the past month. Caterpillar (NYSE:CAT) lost 2.79% today and Deere and Company (NYSE:DE) lost 3.09%.
Today wasn't a big surprise to me as I figured investors wouldn't want to be long stocks going into the weekend with the week we had this week. The last 45 minutes of trading were a fast and furious selloff which doesn't bode well for the very near term market.
Volume was heavy on the exchanges, though it fell quite a bit short of yesterday's tremendous volume. The Nasdaq traded 3 billion shares and the NYSE traded over 1.8 billion. The losers outpaced the gainers by 3 to 1 on the NYSE and 2 to 1 on the Nasdaq.
It is the most basic lesson of the stock market, when buying or selling mania sets in, the stock market overshoots, and I expect it to in this case. Though I believe that stocks are a good value right here, I think they will go lower still before turning around. I think beginning to average into the market is fine since none of us can pick the exact bottom, but I would be careful with buying too much right now.
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