Health & Fitness
WEEK IN REVIEW "The End of the Summer Session"
WEEK IN REVIEW
U.S. stocks declined on Friday, with the Dow industrials and S&P 500 recording their worst month since May 2012, as Wall Street considered a possible U.S. strike against Syria.
Skeleton crews appeared to be manning the trading desks though and it was hard to put that much trust in this week’s moves.
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Meeting with the presidents of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, President Barack Obama on Friday afternoon called the use of chemical weapons a “challenge to the world.”
The president’s words followed the release of U.S. intelligence that found the Syrian government to be behind a chemical attack that killed 1,429 people in a suburb of Damascus.
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In a nationally televised statement Friday afternoon, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry condemned the “indiscriminate and inconceivable horror of chemical weapons,” while outlining Washington’s case against the Syrian government in a deadly attack in Syria last week.
Across the board, all major indices tallied weekly and monthly losses.
Up 13% for the year, the Dow Jones Industrial Average on Friday declined as much as 78 points, but closed down 30.64 points, or 0.2%, to 14,810.31, a level that left it with a 1.3% drop on the week and down 4.5% for the month.
Consumer discretionary fed sector declines and consumer staples and utilities were the only advancing sectors among the 10 major industry groups on the S&P 500 index, which lost 5.21 points, or 0.3%, to 1,632.96, down 1.8% for the week and off 3.1% for the month. The Nasdaq Composite fell 30.43 points, or 0.8%, to 3,589.86. It slid 1.9% for the week and 1% for the month.
Eight of 10 sectors were down on the session. Technology was the worst performing group. Apple slid 0.9% to $487.22 as the company began its iPhone trade-in program. Financials and industrials also underperformed. ADT lost 2.2% to $39.83. Hartford Financial fell 1.1% to $29.60. Saleforce.com was the best performing stock in the S&P 500 today, rallying 12.6% to $49.13 on its increased full year forecast.
Breadth was negative on issues by 5-2 on the NYSE and 3-1 on the NASDAQ. NYSE Composite volume totaled more than 2.6 billion shares.
Treasuries were mostly lower with the 10-year note down 4/32 to yield 2.78%. With today’s decline, the Dow ended August down 4.5%. The S&P 500 lost 3.1% for the month while the NASDAQ fell 1.0%.