Market Wrap: Fear Runs Markets; Yelp! It's an IPO!: Alcatel Shareholders Irate; Getting Whit'-ty at H-P

Market wrap-up for November 17th

End of the Day: Dow Jones down 134.86 to 11,770.73; Nasdaq down 51.6 to $2,587.99; S&P 500 down 20.78 to 1,216.13

The following is a brief summary of events moving markets today:

• Smell that? Yeah...smells like fear: Markets fell once again as concerns over potential expansion of European debt issues hit markets. In a bond sale today, Spain's yields hit a near-euro era record of 7 percent, mirroring yields hit by Italy earlier in the week.
  
  Further, late Wednesday Fitch issued a warning that euro zone contagion poses a threat to the rating outlook for U.S. banks, adding more to already increased fear levels for investors.
  
  
• Yelping to an IPO: Internet company Yelp filed a registration for an initial public offering of its common stock. The proposed value is $100 million. Yelp gets most of its revenue from selling ads, which it marks in its listings. For the first nine months of 2011, Yelp reported a net loss of $7.6 million with sales of $58.4 million. Numbers were narrower than a loss of $8.6 million and revs of $32.5 million in 2010.
  
  
• Alcatel-Lucent shareholders getting angry: Alcatel-Lucent, S.A. (NYSE: ALU) is hitting new lows at $1.84, and boasting a market cap of under $4 billion, and those numbers are rubbing shareholders the wrong way. The solution? Pressuring CEO Ben Verwaayen to resign, or get the Board to boot him (whichever way is cheaper is probably preferred).
  
  Some Board members have murmured they didn't like the execution in the last quarter.
  
  Alcatel is down 72 percent since April, when it hit a 52-week high of $6.63.
  
  
• Less Americans jobless, more simply 'not working': Initial claims fell 5,000 last week to 388,000. Economists were looking for an increase to 395,000. The initial reading for the prior week came in at 390,000. Initial claims were at the lowest point since April.
  
  
• The Whit's have it: Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) appointed Relational Investors' Ralph V. Whitworth to its Board, and Whitworth took a one-percent stake in the Company. Whitworth will join two board committees, the Finance and Investment Committee and the HR and Compensation Committee. For those wondering, Relational Investors is a "San Diego-based, Registered Investment Adviser¹ that serves some of the largest pension funds in the world."
  
  Notably, this is the second surname starting with 'Whit-', with the other belonging to H-P's spanking new CEO Meg Whitman.

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