NEW YORK — Stock indexes Friday stretched their losses into a fourth week, as apprehensive investors remained on alert for any sign of trouble or resolution from the European Union and its banks.
“Given we have a high level of anxiety and we’re coming into a weekend, people would rather be flat than long,” said Randy Frederick, director of trading and derivatives at the Charles Schwab Center for Financial Research.
“The only thing that would make it cascade below levels we put in last week was if we found the EU really turning into a banking crisis,” said Michael Gibbs, a managing director and director of equity strategy at Morgan Keegan.
The Dow Jones industrial average and the Standard & Poor’s 500 both closed out the week at levels above their closing lows hit during the prior week, when a volatile market had the Dow making triple-digit moves each day.
After climbing as much as 120 points during Friday’s session, the Dow Jones industrials lost 172.93 points, or 1.6 percent, to end at 10,817.65, down 4 percent from the week-ago close.
Hewlett-Packard weighed most heavily among the blue chips, off 20 percent a day after the personal-computer maker reduced its outlook and said it might spin off its PC unit.
“HP’s earnings met expectations, but (the company) downgraded its forecast for the rest of the year. The bigger problem is that we have very few retail and institutional players in this market,” Marc Pado, U.S. market strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald, wrote in an e-mailed note.
The S&P fell 17.12 points, or 1.5 percent, to 1,123.53, down 4.7 percent for the week but above the prior week’s closing low of 1,119.46, hit Aug. 8.
The market is “following a normal path of figuring out if the lows of last week are indeed the bottom for this correction, which is EU-driven and EU-focused,” said Gibbs, a managing director and director of equity strategy at Morgan Keegan.
The Nasdaq composite index fell 38.59 points, or 1.6 percent, to 2,341.84, off 6.6 percent from the week-ago close.
