Wall St lower on corporate woes, Iraq concerns

Shares prices were lower in early trade on a raft of lower revenue guidance from companies including Wal-Mart and Sprint Corp, with weak economic data and the threat of a conflict with Iraq further shaking investor confidence, dealers said.

At 10.34 am, the DJIA was down 162.92 points at 7,823.10, the S&P 500 was 16.07 lower at 829.32 while the Nasdaq composite was down 26.51 at 1,194.58.

Dealers said the downward turn of the market in morning trade reflected the lack of any catalyst to buy equities, dealer said.

"The psychology of the portfolio manager is so negatively impacted by all the news that keeps coming out, there is very little reason for stocks to do anything other than remain in the current trading range or test new lows," said James Volk, managing director of institutional trading at DA Davidson.

A larger-than-expected fall in the US index of leading economic indicators did little to foster any positive sentiment.

"There is a danger that even this weak recovery could stall, especially if the consumer market starts to slow," said Ken Goldstein, Conference Board economist, commenting on the data.

The DJIA came under pressure from heavyweight component Wal-Mart, which surprised the market, by announcing that it was seeing same-store sales in September at the low-end of its 4-6% forecast.