Thursday's Options Alerts

The Dow Jones Industrial Average ($INDU.X) closed -0.42% at 8172.45. The S&P 500 ($SPX.X) closed -0.46% at 869.46. The Nasdaq ($COMPQ) closed -0.61% at 1252.13.

The biggest gainers on the day were utilities ($UTIL), +3.24%, biotechnology ($BTK), +1.69%, and healthcare ($HMO), +0.88%.

The biggest losers on the day were airlines ($XAL), -5.04%, networking ($NWX), -3.00%, and banks ($BKX), -1.89%.

After breaking down through the necklines of head-and-shoulders patterns yesterday, the major indexes attempted to put in a reversal, but it just couldn't stick into the close. Today's selling has been largely attributed to Dow component JP Morgan, which was pointed out by Tony Saliba to have a wider reaching potential into other companies.

U.S. Treasury Bonds closed down '4 at 112 '25.

In economic news, the August consumer price index rose 0.3% for both the overall and core reading. Analysts were expecting 0.2% for both numbers. Also, July trading showed a deficit of $34.6 billion vs. an expected deficit of $37 billion. 

Volume was better than average at 1,452,395,000 on the NYSE, and 1,555,680,000 on the Nasdaq.