NEW YORK — U.S. stocks declined Friday, with the indexes tallying monthly gains and weekly losses as a July drop in personal income and a worse quarter than forecast for Dell Inc. supported a bearish view ahead of the long weekend.
“The market is trying to get a sense of what oil will do and how the impact of the tropical storm headed toward the Gulf Coast is going to influence oil prices over the next week, and it’s dealing with the Dell news from last night coming in below expectations,” said Robert Pavlik, chief investment officer at Oaktree Asset Management.
After three consecutive sessions of gains, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 171.22 points, or 1.5 percent, to end at 11,543.96, giving it a weekly loss of 0.7 percent and a monthly gain of 1.5 percent.
All of the blue-chip index’s 30 components closed the day in the red, with General Motors Corp. losing the most during the session, off 3.3 percent.
The S&P 500 Index fell 17.85 points to 1,282.83, with information technology pacing the declines among 10 industry groups, down 1.9 percent. The S&P was down 0.7 percent for the week and posted a monthly advance of 1.2 percent.
The Nasdaq composite index fell 44.12 points to 2,367.52, leaving it up 1.8 percent for the month and down 2.0 percent for the week.
Among the tech laggards, shares of Dell fell 12.6 percent after the PC maker reported a 17 percent profit drop.
Early economic data also weighed. The Commerce Department said consumer spending fell 0.7 percent in July, the most in almost three years, while incomes also dropped.
“The decline in personal income makes sense, given job losses, the slowing economy and that the economic stimulus has been used up,” commented Pavlik, who downplayed the significance of later data that had a gauge of manufacturing activity in the Chicago region picking up in August, as well as a measure of consumer sentiment improving a bit.
Also, ongoing worries that Tropical Storm Gustav might damage critical energy infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico weighed on oil futures. Crude for October delivery fell 13 cents at $115.46 a barrel in the New York Mercantile Exchange while gasoline prices increased a penny overnight to a national average of $3.669.
“There’s not a heck of lot that you can take away from today’s action going into next week; it all depends on the storm and how economic data plays out next week,” added Pavlik. “Through July, 463,000 jobs have been lost since the beginning of this year — if you see a spike in the unemployment rate, the markets get pretty concerned,” the Oaktree investment officer said.
Microsoft Corp. said it’s going to buy Web-based survey company Greenfield Online Inc. for $486 million in cash, or $17.50 a share.
That tops a previous bid by buyout firm Quadrangle of $15.50 a share.
