Stock Prices Dip in Light Trading; Dow Down 6.25

Stocks weakened late today in an extremely light post-Christmas session that brokers called a symptom of the sickly trading volumes and underlying pessimism suffered by the market through much of the year.

The Dow Jones average of 30 industrials fell 6.25 points to close at 2,162.68.

Declining issues outnumbered advances by more than 7-to-5 on the New York Stock Exchange, with 792 down, 544 up and 600 unchanged.

Big Board volume totaled 87.49 million shares, against 81.76 million in the previous session.

The NYSE’s composite index fell 0.48 to 155.58.

Most large-scale institutional investors weren’t participating and those that were limited their transactions to end-of-year portfolio adjustments and a few speculative takeover situations.

“The only thing I can say is the institutions are just sitting back. They’re happy they’re going to get out of the year without any disastrous crashes like we had last year,” said Philip C. Puccio, senior vice president and manager of institutional trading at Dillon Read & Co. in New York. “It’s very tough to get the institutions to do anything in the few sessions left.”

Bond Market Weakens

The bond market started the week on a slightly depressed note.

The Treasury’s bellwether 30-year bond lost about 3/8 point, or $3.75 for every $1,000 in face value, by midday. Its yield, which moves inversely to its price, rose to 8.93% from 8.90% Friday.

The financial markets were closed Monday in observance of Christmas.

Analysts said trading was quiet in the absence of any market-moving news and with some dealers still away because of the holidays. Many traders already have closed their books for the year.

Others got little direction from overseas markets, since U.S. Treasury trading was shut down in Tokyo until Jan. 4 and the London markets were closed for a holiday.

Corporate bonds were unchanged to slightly higher. Moody’s investment grade corporate bond index, which measures price movements on 80 corporate bonds with maturities of five years or longer, rose 0.29 to 295.14.

In the secondary market for Treasury bonds, prices of short-term government issues were down 3/32 point, intermediate maturities fell between 1/8 point and 5/16 point and long-term issues fell between 3/8 point and 1/2 point, according to figures provided by Telerate Inc., a financial information service.

Yields on three-month Treasury bills, meanwhile, rose to 8.36% as the discount edged up 4 basis point to 8.10%. Yields on six-month bills were rose to 8.71% as the discount gained 10 basis points to 8.26%. Yields on one-year bills increased to 9.01% as the discount edged up 7 basis point to 8.34%.

The discount is the percentage that bills are selling below the face value, which is paid at maturity.

The federal funds rate, the interest on overnight loans between banks, was quoted at 8.75%, down from 8.8125% Friday.