Wall Street surrenders early gains

Wall Street stocks pulled back modestly yesterday after a three-session romp that propelled the market to its highest level since…

Wall Street stocks pulled back modestly yesterday after a three-session romp that propelled the market to its highest level since before last month's steep fall. The Dow Jones industrial average, which added about 300 points over the last three sessions, surrendered an early 22-point gain and fell 47.40 points to 7,650.82.

The fall came despite another strong day in the Japanese stock market, which extended Monday's 8 per cent surge with another 2.7 per cent rise. Declines outnumbered advances 3-to-2 on the New York Stock Exchange, with 1,179 up, 1,767 down and 516 unchanged. NYSE volume totalled 520.50 million shares. The Standard and Poor's 500-stock list fell 7.97 to 938.23, the NYSE composite index fell 3.70 to 491.18, and the Nasdaq composite index fell 13.67 to 1,600.44.

The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies fell 3.51 to 432.14, and the small-company dominated American Stock Exchange composite index fell 7.79 to 671.21.