STOCKS : selloff in motion !

Selloff in Motion

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Stocks sold off at the start of the new quarter as disappointing jobless claims data left Wall Street bracing for Friday's unemployment report.
After locking in 15% gains for the third quarter, the Dow Jones Industrial Average started off the new three-month period by taking a 133 point plunge, to 9579, while the S&P 500 slid 18 points to 1039. The Nasdaq Composite edged down 47 points, to 2075.
Stocks fell early after the Department of Labor said there were 551,000 new jobless claims last week, up from an upwardly revised 534,000 the week prior and topping expectations for 535,000.
Those data, paired with a worse than expected report on the private sector earlier in the week, have traders cautious ahead of the most-anticipated data of the week, Friday's unemployment report, says Doug Roberts, chief investment strategist at ChannelCapitalResearch.com
"You've seen chinks in the armor, so people are hesitant -- especially with it coming on a Friday," says Roberts. "There's uncertainty, and until there's some sort of resolution, people are going to be nervous."
In other data Thursday, Institute for Supply Management's manufacturing index edged down 0.3 points to 53.6, vs. expectations for a rise to 54. The Chicago PMI spurred selling earlier in the week, when it indicated a contraction in manufacturing.
"Tentative signs in housing, automobile, Chicago PMI and several other economic indicators continue to remind us that the month of September was weaker than generally expected," writes Seabreeze Partners' Doug Kass, a RealMoney.com contributor. He later adds that, "at the risk of being the boy who cried wolf, I believe that market participants have a false sense of security in rising equity share prices."


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