|
4:25 pm : Friday was shaping up to be another session of hefty losses until buyers emerged midsession to lend support. Leadership came from the financial sector, which carried the major indices off their session lows. The tone Friday turned decidedly pessimistic early on when the latest dose of government data revealed nonfarm payrolls fell by 84,000 during August, bringing the unemployment rate to 6.1%. The decline in payrolls was essentially in-line with expectations, but the headline unemployment rate was higher than expected. Sentiment received little help from technology, which is the largest among the major economic sectors. Shares of tech firms have been hit during recent sessions amid fears that a global slowdown will weigh on their performance. Nokia (NOK 20.62, -1.69), a global leader in phones and handsets, believes its third quarter market share will be down sequentially, which seemed to confirm the aforementioned concerns. Meanwhile, Dell (DELL 20.41, +0.05) is looking to divest its factories, according to The Wall Street Journal. The move would free up capital for the firm by ridding itself of aging assets and allow Dell to avoid the costs of idling factories during slow demand. However, the tech sector did receive leadership from flash memory storage company SanDisk (SNDK 17.64, +4.18). SanDisk saw its shares surge amid takeover chatter. Financials garnered attention after Reuters reported that Blackstone Group (BX 16.43, -0.31) and KKR are each looking to buy parts of Lehman Brothers (LEH 16.20, +1.03). Their interest reportedly centers on the firm's real estate and asset management businesses. Shares of LEH | 
![[edit]](http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/my/edit2.gif){kind=small}
