Wall Street was lower by the middle of the session on Tuesday after new data showed that new housing starts were down sharply in August and Yahoo issued a profits warning. By midday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was 0.5 percent lower to 11,502.09, while the Nasdaq Composite had dropped 1.1 percent to 2,212.25 and the S&P 500 was 0.5 percent lower to 1,315.23.
The news that housing starts were down by 6 percent in August, double the expected drop, hurt the homebuilding sector. Centex and Toll Brothers each dropped 3.2 percent to $51.94 and $27.27 respectively.
Internet search engine Yahoo was 11.6 percent lower to $25.65 when its chief financial officer announced that this quarters results would only reach the lower levels of earlier predictions. The news also hurt Google, which fell 4.5 percent to $395.77.
Dow Jones, which publishes the Wall Street Journal, was also lower on a revised earnings guidance, dropping 2.5 percent to $33.02. In yet another lowered guidance, semiconductors company Maxim Integrated Products declined by 6.1 percent to $29.45.
In the pharmaceuticals sector, ImClone Systems fell 6.3 percent to $28.59 after a judged ruled that the process it used to come up with its cancer drug Erbitux was actually invented by three Israeli scientists, whose employer could be entitled to royalties due to ImClone’s use of the process.