Last Updated: January 29th, 2009: 4:25 PM ET---The major US equity indices closed at session lows as investors took profit from Wednesday's rally following a number of disappointing quarterly results and record setting unemployment numbers. The Dow closed 2.7% lower to 8,149 with all but three components closing in the red. 3M (NYSE:MMM), Merck (NYSE:MRK) and Procter & Gamble (NYSE:PG) were the Industrials only winners, meanwhile, Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) was the Dow's laggard. The Nasdaq closed 3.2% lower, to 1,508 and the S&P 500 closed off 3.3% to 845. Sentiment turned sour before the market even opened when companies like Starbucks (NASDAQ:SBUX), Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) and Allstate (NYSE:ALL) reported disappointing results Wednesday afternoon. Starbucks (NASDAQ:SBUX) reported fiscal first-quarter earnings of 15 cents per share, ex-items, less than the 17-cent consensus estimate. Revenues fell 6% vs. the year-ago period to $2.62 billion and below the $2.69 billion consensus. Starbucks (NASDAQ:SBUX) also announced plans to shutdown 300 additional stores and eliminate 6,700 jobs. Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) printed first-quarter earnings at 31 cents, excluding one-time items, missing 47-cent estimates. Allstate (NYSE:ALL), which was the main culprit in the financial sector's plight, reported earnings that came in well below analysts' expectations of $1.35 per share, with earnings of 97 cents per share, excluding one-time items. Furthermore, Allstate (NYSE:ALL) said it would cut about 1,000 jobs from its financial unit. Later in the morning economic data just made matters worse when reports from the Labor Department and the Commerce Department came in showing worse figures than economists had projected. The Labor Department released its weekly reading on jobless claims for the week ended January 17th showing the number of Americans seeking new jobless benefits rose slightly to a seasonally adjusted 588,000, compared to a revised 585,000 number the prior week. Economists, on average, were forecasting a 575,000 reading. The U.S. Commerce Department reported new homes sales plunged to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 331,000 in December, falling short of the 400,000 consensus, and down 14.7% from Novembers revised annual rate of 388,000. Year-over-year, new home sales were down 44.8% when the annual rate was 600,000. December's new home sales reading was the lowest since reporting began in 1963. However, the US government did try to show some action when the US Treasury announced it had agreed to provide up to $60 billion, by use of its Federal Financing Bank, in an effort to shore up student loans and reduce illiquid assets on bank's balance sheets. The program will buy existing student loans from banks and then issue asset backed commercial paper. Ford (NYSE:F) reported a widened quarterly loss of $5.9 billion, or $2.46 per share, versus a loss of $2.8 billion, or $1.13 per share in the year-ago period. Excluding one-time items, the company reported a $1.37 loss for the quarter, missing consensus estimates of a loss of $1.30 per share. The company's full-year loss came in at $14.6 billion, surpassing its '06 loss of $12.6 billion, resulting in the company's cash reserves to fall from $18.9 billion to $13.4 billion currently. The downtrodden automaker also said that after its worst annual performance ever, a history that spans for 105 years, it will tap a revolving credit line. Despite reiterating the fact that it will not need to tap government allotted resources like General Motors (NYSE:GM) and Chrysler may do, the nation's second-largest automaker did revise its 2009 domestic sales range to 11.5 million-12.5 million from 12.2 million.

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