Dow Breaks 6-Day Rally, Ending Off 4.11

NEW YORK — Wall Street’s Dow Jones industrials snapped a six-session winning streak Wednesday, pulling back from their post-crash highs on a lower dollar, surging oil prices and weak bond prices for much the day.

The Dow Jones industrial index, which had advanced in every session since last Tuesday, finished down 4.11 points at 2,338.21.

Advancing issues slightly outnumbered declines in nationwide trading of New York Stock Exchange-listed stocks, with 753 up, 718 down and 518 unchanged.

Volume on the floor of the Big Board came to 215.64 million shares, up from 194.05 million Tuesday.

“This is a dollar-caused decline,” said Edward Shopkorn, general partner in charge of institutional equities at Mabon Nugent. “But then, nothing goes straight up forever. The market could stand to give some back.”

January Gains

Treasury bond prices also were weak much of the day as the bond market waited for the government to outline its quarterly refunding plan. But the benchmark 30-year bond ended slightly higher, lowering its yield to 8.81% from 8.82%, after the Treasury unveiled plans that were much as expected.

A 48-cent jump in U.S. crude oil futures, buoyed by higher heating oil prices, also burdened the equities market. Higher oil prices tend to lift costs throughout the economy.

The Dow blue chip index has gained more than 100 points since last Tuesday as institutional investors returned to the equities market in force.

For all of January, the Dow rose 173.57 points. That marked one of the most dramatic gains for January in recent years, surpassed only by a 262.09-point jump at the start of 1987.

The rally was due in large part to the dollar’s strength and firmer bond prices. But “the dollar has been hitting resistance on the chart and that made bonds pause and the stock market pause,” explained Morry Markovitz, president of Mercury Management Associates.

Markovitz said he believed that the recent stock market rally was no flash-in-the-pan. “We’re in the early stages of the next bull market and blue chips at some point will pass the leadership to the smaller stocks.”

Share prices ended generally higher on both the American Stock Exchange and in the over-the-counter market.

However, Andrew McVeigh, director of research at Rodman & Renshaw, said that he was worried by the unevenness of the market’s advance. “This rally has been very segmented in that some of the over-the-counter stocks have moved, the Dow stocks have moved, but most in the middle tier have not.”

Compaq Climbs

He added that he was bothered by the lack of retail participation. “If we’re going to take any shots at the highs, you need the retail investors,” McVeigh said.

Brokers also noted caution over recent evidence of continued strength in the economy.

The Commerce Department reported in the morning that the index of leading economic indicators rose 0.6% in December, outpacing many advance estimates.

On Friday, monthly statistics from the Labor Department are expected to show a good-sized gain in payroll employment for January.

Compaq Computer climbed 3 1/2 to 73 1/4. The company reported fourth-quarter earnings of $2.18 a share, against $1.25 in the like period a year earlier.

West Point-Pepperell gained 2 1/2 to 53 1/4. Farley Inc. increased its offer for the company from $48 a share to $52 a share.

Circle K, which said it retained a merchant banking firm to study ways to increase the return to its shareholders, rose 2 1/4 to 14 3/4.

Ryder System gained 1 1/8 to 28 1/8. The company said it plans to buy back as much as 15% of its stock and may sell four divisions, including its insurance management services operation.

Among actively traded blue chip and technology issues, Digital Equipment rose 1 1/8 to 119 3/4; American Telephone & Telegraph gained 5/8 to 32 1/8, and Ford Motor was up 1/2 at 55 1/8.

But International Business Machines dropped 1 to 129 5/8 and General Electric was off 1/8 at 48 1/4.

Tokyo Stocks Fall

MCI Communications added 1/2 to 25 5/8 as the most active issue in the over-the-counter market. MCI posted substantially higher fourth-quarter operating earnings.

The Wilshire index of 5,000 equities ended the day at 2,916.890, down 0.371, from Tuesday’s close.

The NYSE’s composite index of all its listed common stocks slipped 0.16 to 166.47.

Standard & Poor’s industrial index fell 0.33 to 343.87, and S&P;’s 500-stock composite index was down 0.38 at 297.09.

The NASDAQ composite index for the over-the-counter market gained 1.93 to 403.23. At the American Stock Exchange, the market-value index closed at 323.24, up 0.22.

In Tokyo, stock prices closed sharply lower Wednesday on worries that a declining yen would result in inflation and higher domestic interest rates. The Nikkei 225-share index fell 220.62 points, or 0.70%, to 31,360.68.

A brief surge on Wall Street picked the London stock market up off the floor on Wednesday, but the market still closed lower, breaking a string of four straight rises. London shares were hit early in the session by investors taking profits from the surge in prices in recent days. But the Financial Times 100-share index bounced off the day’s lows to end 12.1 points down at 2,039.7.