Only five major local companies are reporting positive percent increases in the price per share during early trading this morning.

SanDisk Corp. (SNDK), the flash memory manufacturer, has the highest increase so far with shares hovering around a 0.8 percent increase. Rounding out the top five are Google Inc. (GOOG), The Clorox Company (CLX), Agilent Technologies Inc. (A) and Xilinx, Inc. (XLNX).

Electronic Arts Inc. (ERTS) is down more than 3 percent this morning, the largest drop so far today of local companies. UnionBanCal Corp. (UB) is down nearly 3 percent, and salesforce.com, inc. (CRM) is down more than 2.5 percent in early trading.

The companies trading at the highest volume are Intel Corp. (INTC) with 27.35 million shares changing hands and Sun Microsystems, Inc. (JAVA), which is down 18.35 million.

Overall, the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index is down this morning, with losses hovering around 200 points.

In other stock news, Yahoo!, Inc. (YHOO) released a beta version of the popular Messenger service with more social-networking features, according to TMCnet.com. Also, Standard & Poor's Ratings Services revised its outlook on Clorox from negative to stable because of the company's purchase of natural body product company, Burt's Bees, according to CNNMoney.com.

businessBusiness & Real Estate