A drop in March existing home sales weighed the markets down to a lower close with the Dow falling 68 points to 12,964. Nasdaq dropped 23 points to 3007.

On the upside

Shares of Splunk (Nasdaq: SPLK) soared on its first trading day.

Three American Airlines unions support efforts by US Airways (NYSE: LCC) to acquire the bankrupt airline.

Cypress Semiconductor (Nasdaq: CY) fell to a loss for the first quarter as expenses rose but the results were better than expected.

On the downside

Nucor (NYSE: NUE) disappointed with lower first quarter earnings as shipments slipped.

Level 3 Communications (NYSE: LVLT) will provide its IP-VPN solution to the UK Government’s Public Services Network Connectivity Framework but the stock price fell.

Tsakos Energy Navigation (NYSE: TNP) priced its public offering of 10 million common shares at $6.50 per share.

In the broad market, declining issues outpaced advancers by a margin of more than 7 to 5 on the NYSE and by 5 to 3 on Nasdaq. The Russell 2000 which tracks small cap stocks lost 4 points to 798.