The 4 Stocks That Sank the Market

May 28, 2014: Markets opened mixed on Wednesday and both the DJIA and the Nasdaq Composite traded in negative territory all day. The S&P 500 made brief forays above the break even line, but holding onto a gain was more than the index could manage today. Shortly before the closing bell the DJIA traded down 0.17% for the day, the S&P 500 was down 0.03%, and the Nasdaq Composite traded down 0.20%.

Today’s big decliner among the Dow 30 was McDonald’s Corp (NYSE: MCD) which traded at $1.06, down 101.29% in a 52-week range of $92.22 to $103.78. Share volume was about 20% higher than the daily average of around 5 million shares traded. The company said today that it would return up to $20 billion to shareholders over the next three years, but apparently that’s not enough.

International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM) traded lower by 0.83% to trade at $183.25 in a 52-week range of $172.19 to $211.98. A request from the Chinese government to have its banks replace IBM’s with Chinese-made boxes to counter a threat to the country’s security. Share volume was around 25% lower than the daily average of about 5 million shares.

UnitedHealth Group Inc. (NYSE: UNH) showed a drop of 0.64% today and traded at $78.61 in a 52-week range of $60.95 to $83.32. Volume was about 50% below the daily average of around 4.7million shares. The company had no news today.

Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR), unfortunately not a component of any of the indexes, appears on the brink of breaking long string of daily losses, trading up 10.32% at $33.65 just before the closing bell. The company was raised from Neutral to Buy at Nomura this morning. The stock’s 52-week range is $29.51 to $7.73. Volume is more than 3-times the daily average of 17 million shares.

Of the Dow 30 stocks 14 looked to close higher today while 16 were on their way to a lower finish.

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