NEW YORK - Stocks wobbled lower Friday as investors, unable to shake their jitters over high oil prices, shrugged off mostly upbeat government data showing strong sales last month of durable goods and new homes.
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In late morning trading, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 30.00, or 0.3 percent, at 10,391.44, after plunging more than 166 points in the previous session.
The broader gauges, which also posted substantial losses Thursday, were down as well. The Standard & Poor's 500 index shed 1.21, or 0.10 percent, to 1,199.52. The Nasdaq composite index fell 8.34, or 0.4 percent, to 2,062.32.
Bonds posted gains, and the yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 3.93 percent, down from 3.96 percent late Thursday. The dollar was mixed against other major currencies and gold prices rose.
Crude oil was up 18 cents at $59.60 in electronic trading, a day after it surged past the psychologically important $60 per barrel level for the first time to post a new intraday high.
Also adding some volatility to the market, institutional investors were adjusting their portfolios to reflect the annual rebalancing of the Russell indexes.
The Commerce Department reported 5.5 percent rise in orders to U.S. factories for big-ticket manufactured goods last month, largely due to a huge jump in demand for commercial aircraft. It was the fastest pace of growth in durable goods orders in 14 months, and far exceeded the 1.9 percent increase forecast by economists.
Excluding the volatile transportation sector, however, durable goods orders fell by 0.2 percent in May, the third decline in the past four months. Economists have worried that soaring oil prices could harm the health of the manufacturing sector, which has rebounded since the 2001 recession.
Also in May, sales of new homes climbed to the second highest level in history, but median home prices fell sharply. The government reported that sales of new single-family homes rose by 2.1 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.3 million homes, but the median cost dropped 6.5 percent to $217,000.
Citigroup Inc. was up 23 cents at $47.11 after the world's largest financial-services firm announced a $3.7 billion deal to swap most of its asset-management business for the broker-dealer business of Legg Mason Inc., as well as Legg Mason stock and a loan to the Baltimore financial-services firm. Legg Mason gained 11 percent, or $9.46, to $94.45, on the news.
Guidant Corp. sank 9.7 percent, or $6.67, to $61.93, after the medical devices maker warned doctors to avoid implanting certain defibrillator models due to manufacturing defects. The company has also alerted the Food and Drug Administration, which may classify the action as a recall.
Unocal Corp. added 28 cents to $65.30 after the Chinese state-owned oil company CNOOC Ltd., which made an unsolicited $18.5 billion offer for the oil company on Thursday, said it was willing to discuss selling some Unocal assets and putting others under American management. The announcement came after four members of ConGREss called on the U.S. government to review the security implications of the proposed deal. Rival bidder Chevron Corp. gained 19 cents to $57.52.
The Russell 2000 index, which tracks smaller company stocks, was down 3.76, or 0.59 percent, at 630.36.
Declining issues outnumbered advancers by about 4 to 3 on the New York Stock Exchange. Volume was at 416.18 million shares, compared with 388.54 million traded at the same point Thursday.
Overseas, Japan's Nikkei stock average slipped 0.34 percent. In afternoon trading in Europe, France's CAC-40 fell 0.91 percent, Britain's FTSE 100 declined 0.72 percent and Germany's DAX index was down 1.09 percent.
