Most of the time, you expect good news to push the stock market up. But despite consumer confidence hitting levels not seen since mid-2008, a huge gain in housing prices, and a jump in business investment in orders for core capital goods, investors weren't willing to commit to stocks amid more general uncertainty about the immediate future. As of 10:45 a.m. EST, the Dow Jones Industrials (^DJI 0.69%) are down about 40 points, with broader market measures falling about a third of a percentage point.
Hewlett-Packard (HPQ -0.11%) once again made the top movers list -- this time on the downside, falling about 1.5%. In the ongoing saga of the Autonomy debacle, HP now faces an investor lawsuit alleging that it knew certain statements made by Autonomy were misleading and hid other facts. Shareholders should expect continued volatility in both directions for the foreseeable future.
Intel (INTC -0.38%) moved in the other direction, rising about 1%. A Wall Street Journal article discussed the big market for PCs in Indonesia as potentially boosting Intel's results. Yet Corning's (GLW -0.06%) announcement this morning of better-than-expected sales projections only emphasizes the importance of Intel breaking into the mobile market, as Corning expects Gorilla Glass revenue of more than $1 billion this year.
Finally, McDonald's (MCD 0.47%) continued falling after its 1% drop yesterday, seeing declines of 0.2%. Yesterday's downgrade of the stock by Lazard Capital Markets marked the latest in a string of bad news for the fast-food giant, which has seen same-store sales go negative. With the stock among the worst performers in the Dow this year, there are few signs that McDonald's will recover quickly.
