Russell slightly lower; UAUA, CIT and AKT lead gainers

The Russell 2000 (NYSE:IWM) remained a smidge lower into the midday, but well off the morning lows as gains in the technology arena spilled over into the broad market. Concerns about the economy, a moribund housing market and expiration jitters kept a lid on some buying interest, but the market was trying to spark a rally heading toward the afternoon. Today’s small-cap gainers are UAL Corp. (Nasdaq:UAUA), CIT (NYSE:CIT) and Ambac Financial Group (NYSE:AKT). Other Market Watch highlights today include:

• Light, sweet crude for November delivery is up $1.66 to $71.51 a barrel. On Thursday, it sank to a 14-month low on worries about a deep global recession obliterating fuel demand.
• BMO Capital's Andy Busch to SCI: "There is a serious need to educate the banking sector participants on the changes in the Treasury programs the Fed programs directed at easing the credit crunch." 
• Outside of the gold market, commodity stocks were doing well today, with coal, steel, gas utilities, oil exploration, gas storage and agriculture products all up. 
• On the downside, anything tied to housing was struggling, including home furnishing stocks and homebuilder shares. Bank stocks and financial shares were also lagging the general market. 
• The expiration of options on stocks today likely played a role in some of the market’s struggles as the directional bias into expiration is clearly toward lower prices. 

Small Cap Gainers:

• CIT (NYSE:CIT) loss widens; vendor finance write-down hurts. Shares of the finance company are soaring 47%.
• United Air’s parent UAL Corp. (Nasdaq:UAUA) is up 20% today, extending its rise from Thursday.
• Ambac Financial Group (NYSE:AKT) is soaring nearly 30% on news . . .

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