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The current yield of 2.15 percent on the benchmark 10-year Treasury
note is extremely low by historical standards. It's also nearly
identical to the average dividend payment of 2.14 percent for stocks
in the S&P 500. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 9.04 points to close at 1,631.38, a drop of 0.6 percent. It had lost as much as 16 points, or 1 percent, around 2:30 p.m. The Dow Jones industrial average lost 76.49 points to 15,177.54, a drop of 0.5 percent. The Dow had gained for the previous 20 Tuesdays in a row. The Nasdaq composite fell 20.11 points to 3,445.26, down 0.6 percent. It looked like the stock market was headed for a second straight day of gains at the start of trading Tuesday. Encouraging news about home prices and trade helped push the S&P 500 up 0.4 percent in the early going. It turned flat shortly before noon, slid 1 percent an hour later and then spent the rest of the day climbing back. General Motors gained 1.6 percent on news that the company will be added to the S&P 500 index on Thursday, replacing H.J. Heinz Co. The ketchup maker is being acquired by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and the private equity firm 3G Capital. GM rose 54 cents to $34.96. The price of crude oil slipped 14 cents to $93.31 a barrel and gold fell $14.70 to $1,397.20 an ounce. Among other companies in the news: Dollar General sank 9 percent, the biggest drop in the S&P 500. The discount-store chain cut its earnings and revenue forecast for the year ahead because it expects sales to slow. Dollar General's stock dropped $4.91 to $48.64. SAIC slid 7 cents to $14.77. The security and communications technology company posted a 31 percent drop in quarterly earnings late Monday, as government spending cuts crimped SAIC's revenue. Salesforce.com announced plans buy the marketing software company ExactTarget for $2.3 billion. Salesforce fell 8 percent, or $3.24, to $37.80. ExactTarget jumped 52 percent, or $11.59, to $33.69.
[Associated
Press;
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