Stocks fell in early trading Monday as Wall Street, coming off a solid week of gains, awaited data on existing home sales, according to AP. The market pulled back ahead of The National Association of Realtors' report scheduled to be released at 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT). It is expected to show that sales of existing homes inched upward in July, the first increase after four straight months of declines, according to the consensus forecast of economists surveyed by Thomson/IFR. A much weaker-than-anticipated figure could worry investors who are jittery about mortgage defaults and delinquencies causing lenders to make credit less available. There still seems to be an appetite for corporate takeovers despite concerns about available credit. On Monday, U.S. Steel Corp. said it will buy Canada's Stelco Inc. for about $1.1 billion (¤810 million); Swiss electrical engineer ABB Ltd. said it will sell its oil and gas production plant to Chicago Bridge & Iron NV for $950 million (¤695.5 million); and Taiwanese computer vender Acer Inc. said it will acquire U.S. computer maker Gateway Inc. for $710 million (¤520 million). In the first hour of trading, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 29.67, or 0.22 percent, to 13,349.20. Broader stock indicators also slipped. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 4.10, or 0.28 percent, to 1,475.27, and the Nasdaq composite index fell 7.92, or 0.31 percent, to 2,568.77.
