By Leah Schnurr
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street skidded on Wednesday on the latest batch of corporate losses and lowered outlooks, deepening concern the recession would be long and severe.
Among the decliners, ConocoPhillips, the third largest U.S. oil company, said exploration and production output would be below year-ago levels in 2008, while drugmaker Merck & Co tempered its long-range earnings outlook.
Conoco's shares were down 7.3 percent at $50.04 and Merck slipped 2.3 percent to $29.28.
Wachovia Corp, which is being bought by Wells Fargo & Co, posted a third-quarter loss of $23.9 billion, a record quarterly loss for a banking company during the credit crisis.
Shares of Boeing Co fell 7 percent as it posted a profit decline after a strike by its plane assembly workers evaporated nearly a month of production. The company offered no new outlook. Its shares dropped to $43.14.
"I think this is the period where everyone is saying, 'Oh darn, the recession is here'," said Bruce Zaro, chief technical analyst at Delta Global Advisors in Boston.
"Even though there's some earnings-topping expectations, the outlook is cloudy and being revised down as well, so I think that's why the outperformers have not been able to impart any kind of momentum on the upside."
The Dow Jones industrial average slumped 308.24 points, or 3.41 percent, to 8,725.42. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index lost 33.98 points, or 3.56 percent, to 921.07. The Nasdaq Composite Index gave up 36.29 points, or 2.14 percent, at 1,660.39.
SanDisk shed 29.1 percent to $10.46 after Samsung Electronics walked away from its $5.9 billion unsolicited bid for the U.S. company, citing SanDisk's deepening losses and uncertain outlook.
Oil companies Exxon Mobil and Chevron were among the biggest drags on the Dow as the price of oil fell below $70 a barrel. Exxon was down 5.1 percent at $67.86, and Chevron gave up 5.5 percent at $63.10.
Interbank borrowing costs fell again, but the fresh round of quarterly results took the spotlight from an easing of the interest rates banks lend to each other.
The rising recession worries highlighted concerns over the extent to which the credit crisis has damaged the economy.
Apple Inc bucked the trend, gaining 6.5 percent to $97.42, after it reported a stronger-than-expected rise in quarterly profit late on Tuesday but issued forecasts for the fourth quarter that were below Wall Street's expectations.
Apple said that it sold 6.89 million iPhones during the quarter, outpacing the BlackBerry from Research In Motion. RIM was down 3.8 percent at $48.60.
Yahoo Inc also pushed against the current, rising 4.6 percent to $12.63, after it reported sharply lower profit on nearly flat sales but said it plans to cut at least 10 percent of its workforce.
Among others to release results, AT&T fell 5.3 percent to $24.37 after the top U.S. phone company said its full-year profit margins would be hurt more than expected by carrying the iPhone, but Apple's device helped increase quarterly revenue and mobile subscribers.
Markets in Europe and Asia slid sharply as they were also hurt by worries of a recession and falling commodity prices. Japan's Nikkei fell nearly 7 percent overnight, while in Europe benchmark indexes ended down 5.5 percent.
(Editing by Kenneth Barry)
