Shares of technology, retail and real estate companies led a broad slump in local stocks on Friday.
The stocks fell along with the national indexes on word of stalled job growth, predications of a tough 2008 for retailers and a downgrade for chip bellwether Intel Corp.
Local tech stocks fell on comments from J.P. Morgan analyst Christopher Danely that Intel saw a slowdown in orders late in the fourth quarter.
Shares of Irvine-based chipmaker Broadcom Corp. fell more than 6% near the close of trading on a market value of $13.4 billion.
Declines spread throughout local tech stocks late in the session: Santa Ana-based circuit board maker TTM Technologies Inc. was off 10%; Lake Forest-based disk drive maker Western Digital Corp. fell nearly 10%; Santa Ana-based Ingram Micro Inc., the largest distributor of tech products, fell 5%; and Aliso Viejo-based networking products maker QLogic Corp. fell nearly 4%.
Retail and apparel companies also dropped.
Anaheim-based Pacific Sunwear of California Inc. fell about 6% late in the session after it said it was unable to find a buyer for its struggling demo chain and plans to close it.
Pacific Sunwear and others also fell amid worries about weak holiday sales and tough going in the first half of 2008.
Huntington Beach-based clothing designers Quiksilver Inc. and Costa Mesa’s Volcom Inc. also dropped sharply, with Volcom rebounding later in Friday trading.
Foothill Ranch-based mall retailer Wet Seal Inc. fell about 4%.
Wounded real estate-related stocks took another beating in the downturn.
Shares of Irvine-based homebuilder Standard Pacific Corp. fell nearly 10%. Shares of Newport Beach-based home loan lender Downey Financial Corp. fell nearly 6%. Santa Ana-based title insurer First American Corp. was off 3%.
A report showing job growth skidded to a near-halt in December and unemployment is at a two-year high was a key driver of the Wall Street downturn.
The Labor Department said 18,000 new nonfarm jobs were added last month, the weakest performance since August 2003. The unemployment rate rose to 5% from 4.7% percent in November, the largest monthly rise since October 2001 in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
