Market dive makes Philadelphia's most valuable companies less so

What is it about Mondays in October?

Yesterday’s declines in all major stock market indexes won’t earn a colorful name like Black Monday. But seeing intraday percentage drops of 7 to 8 percent was pretty unnerving.

The Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 Composite Index, which tracks 5,000 domestic stocks, is often seen as the proxy for the entire U.S. equity market. Those who track it say yesterday’s downdraft blew away $500 billion in market capitalization.

I looked at 25 U.S. companies either based in the Philadelphia area or with significant operations here and calculated that collectively they lost nearly $33 billion in value yesterday alone.

JPMorgan Chase & Co., which employs thousands in northern Delaware, saw its market cap drop $6.5 billion from the end of trading on Friday to Monday’s close. If you’d owned 100 shares of JPMorgan, your holdings dropped $190 in a single day.

Stocks don’t get much more defensive than Johnson & Johnson - Band-Aids, Listerine, Tylenol and baby shampoo. But even J&J got bruised by $4.6 billion in lost market value.

Utilities were no safe haven either. The market storm zapped $2.5 billion in market value from Exelon Corp., the parent of Peco, the region’s biggest electric and gas service provider.

While many were glued to scrolling tickers throughout the afternoon on cable news channels, Comcast Corp. lost $800 million from its $53.6 billion in market cap on Friday.

The picture was no different if they happened to be watching Verizon’s FiOS TV service. Verizon Communications Inc. was worth $3.6 billion less by the day’s end.

Radnor-based Lincoln National Corp. had it particularly rough among local stocks. Shares of Lincoln closed at $33.60, down $5.63 or 14 percent. An owner of 100 shares would have a one-day paper loss of $563.

Of the 25 big local stocks I reviewed, only one finished the day higher. Given the intensifying global credit crisis, it stands to reason that that stock would be a bank: PNC Financial Services Group Inc. Shares of the Pittsburgh-based bank rose $1.25 to close at $75.40.

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