Volatile Trading Ends Sharply Lower

Another volative trading day ended sharply lower with the Dow plummeting 338 points to 8497 despite falling oil and gas prices as retail sales post a record drop.  Nasdaq slumped 80 points to 1517.

On the upside

Hartford Financial Services Group (NYSE: HIG) will pay $10 million to acquire Federal Trust.  The financial services firm also applied to become a savings and loan holding company in order to be eligible to participate in the government's Capital Purchase Program.

The Treasury Department gave preliminary approval to The South Financial Group's (Nasdaq: TSFG) application to take part in the Capital Purchase Program.

MYR Group (Nasdaq: MYRG) impressed with sharply higher third quarter earnings as revenue surged.

On the downside

A report indicating disappointing sales of music genre video games sent shares of "Guitar Hero" publisher Activision Blizzard (Nasdaq: ATVI) tumbling. 

In an effort to cut expenses, Micron Technology (NYSE: MU) requested that all its employees take up to twelve days off during the holidays.

Fox-Pitt Kelton analyst David Trone said that Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) will most likely report a loss for the fourth quarter as revenue tumbles.

In the broad market, declining issues outpaced advancers by a margin of more than 7 to 2 on the NYSE and by nearly 4 to 1 on Nasdaq.  The Russell 2000 which tracks small cap stocks collapsed 35 points to 457.