Conflicting Signals Weaken Stocks

Stocks fell in volatile trading Tuesday as market players reacted to conflicting reports on the economy and worried about the direction of interest rates.

Technology shares, concentrated in the Nasdaq Stock Market, took the soundest beating in the market’s third consecutive retreat. Those issues are among the best performers of recent months.

The Dow Jones industrial average lost 8.64 points to 4,542.61 after advancing as much as 20 points earlier in the session.

Declining issues narrowly outnumbered advances on the New York Stock Exchange.

Big Board volume totaled a heavy 346.90 million shares as of 4 p.m., up from 296.67 million in the previous session.

Stocks started the session lower, resuming the downward course of the previous two sessions that had at least temporarily halted a fourmonth run of news highs. Weak overseas markets and lower bond prices again helped set the sour tone.

Shortly after the market opened, however, stocks shot higher, gaining as much as 20 points on a Conference Board report showing consumer faith in the economy plunged in June for the biggest monthly decline in three years.

Some of the stocks that moved substantially or traded heavily Tuesday:

NYSE

Champion International, down 2 5/8 to 51.

Loews said it would sell 5 million shares of the stock at $52.45.

Pepsi Co., down 1 1/4 to 45 5/8

Goldman Sachs removed the company from a top investment list. Meanwhile, a Teamsters strike against Pepsi appeared to widen.

Mobil Corp., up 1 3/8 to 97 1/2.

The company said it wants to increase its earnings by $1 billion by 1998. The oil company said it expects much of the improvement to come from the realignment of its worldwide staff support services and further restructuring of U.S. and European marketing and refining operations.

NASDAQ

Amgen, up 1/2 to 77 3/8.

A Morgan Stanley analyst upgraded a rating on the stock and raised earnings projections for the biotechnology company.

AMEX

Viacom, class B shares, up 1 7/8 at 43 3/4.

Shares were moving higher after Fitch Investors Service said it assigned an F-3 rating to the company’s commercial paper program and affirmed Viacom’s BBB-Minus senior debt rating.