Stocks Open Down on J&J Earnings

Wall Street opened down this morning following Johnson & Johnson third-quarter earnings and a big Cisco acquisition.

In the first 30 minutes of trading, the Dow is down half of 1 percent.

The S&P 500 is down about seven-tenths of 1 percent and the tech-heavy Nasdaq is down one-quarter of 1 percent.

J&J, the world's largest health-care company, reported a tiny 1 percent rise in earnings and missed revenue expectations for the quarter, owing to competition from generic drugmakers.

Cisco, which makes the plumbing for the Internet (routers and so forth), spent $2.2 billion to buy Starent Networks, which makes equipment that lets wireless carriers tie smartphones to the Internet.

-- Frank Ahrens
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