Stocks Trading Lower

Closing in on 2009 -- after a year many investors would like to forget -- Wall Street opened the holiday week sort of quiet, but down. The Dow was down about 10 points, to 8,569. The S&P 500 was down 2 points, to 886, while the Nasdaq was down 8 points, to 1,556.

So far, the dominating news of the day is Toyota's announcement that it is slashing its earnings forecast. The Japanese automaker projects it will report its first ever annual operating loss.

"The change that has hit the world economy is of a critical scale that comes once in a hundred years," Toyota president Katsuaki Watanabe told the Associated Press.

-- Michael S. Rosenwald