Stocks hammered again

OK all you bears out there. We get the point. Inflation is scary and higher interest rates can bring equity markets to their knees. Which is pretty much what happened on this third straight down day - and today was especially bleak. The Dow tumbled 198 points, about 80 of that coming in the closing minutes of the session. The question, of course, is whether there's real reason to worry about businesses getting stalled out by higher interest rates, or whether it's just a convenient excuse to take some profits after weeks of record highs. Traders were clearly spooked by seeing the yield on 10-year notes hit 5.095 percent from 4.97 percent. In the bond world, that's a huge bump and it makes investors wonder whether they're better off ditching stocks. See the problem? As for local issues, most everything was down. The numbers below will probably be adjusted a bit at the end of the trading day, but you get the picture.

Activision -5.67%
California Pizza Kitchen -4.03%
Cheesecake Factory -3.27%
Edison -4.56%
Jacobs Engineering -5.88%
KB -3.67%
Mattel -3.44%
Ryland -3.90%