Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Dow's Losing Streak Hits Seven

The Dow Jones Industrial Average ticked off a string of ignominious markers on Friday. Among them: the longest losing streak since the dark days of the financial crisis.

The Dow slipped 46.05 points, or 0.5%, to 9686.48, its seventh straight decline and longest losing streak since the eight-day fall ended Oct. 10, 2008.
The benchmark tumbled 4.5% for the week, its worst weekly percentage drop since the week of the May 6 "flash crash."
The weekly percentage drop also represented the worst performance for any week leading up to the July 4th weekend since 1896. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq put in similarly bleak performances.
The declines came on relatively muted volume ahead of the July 4 holiday weekend. Just over 4 billion shares had traded hands in New York Stock Exchange Composite volume, well shy of the 2010 daily average of 5.4 billion shares.
All in all, it was not a great week for stocks. Worries have been mainly driven be renewed anxiety about the U.S. economy. Those fears were kept alive Friday by a report showing the first drop in U.S. nonfarm payrolls so far this year.
"The only thing that would have been surprising is if it had been a good number," said strategist Stephen Wood of Russell Investments in New York.
Consumer-discretionary companies led the market's decline as investors worried about how the drop in payrolls might hurt already weak consumer and business spending.

Worries about the economy fed into the currency markets, where the dollar slipped against the euro. The euro ended Friday afternoon at $1.2550, up from $1.2386 a week earlier.
Treasurys fell, but gained on the week as concerns percolated about a second half slowdown in the U.S. Crude-oil futures fell for a fifth consecutive day, capping their steepest weekly decline since early May.

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