NEW YORK - Investors drove the stock market lower for a second straight day Friday as concerns grew that earnings growth is faltering.
While weaker earnings at JPMorgan Chase dragged bank stocks lower, big drops in once-soaring tech stocks pushed the Nasdaq composite down for a third week.
“The market has been trying to come back, but each time the selling just picks up,” said Quincy Krosby, a market strategist at Prudential. “The buyers are just not stepping in.”
On Friday, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 143.47 points, or 0.89 percent, to 16,026.75. The S&P 500 fell 17.39 points, or 0.95 percent, to 1,815.69.
The Nasdaq dropped 54.37 points, or 1.3 percent, to 3,999.73 - marking only the second time this year that the index has closed below the 4,000 mark.
Investors who were worried that technology shares were overvalued dumped those for a second day, with some of the biggest gainers of late falling sharply. Facebook fell 1.1 percent, after a 5 percent drop Thursday.
The first-quarter earnings season has just started, but investors already seem anxious about what lies ahead. Analysts expect earnings for companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index to drop 1.6 percent from a year earlier, according to FactSet, a financial data provider. At the start of the year, they expected a jump of 4.3 percent.
If profits do fall, it would be only the second quarterly drop in three years.
“Earnings are going to come in on the sloppy side,” said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Rockwell Global Capital. “The market needs to correct,” he added, referring to the sharp downturn in stocks.
All 10 industry sectors in the S&P 500 dropped. Consumer discretionary stocks fell the most, down 1.4 percent, followed by technology stocks, down 1.2 percent.
Last year, earnings for S&P 500 companies rose 6 percent. Stocks rose much faster - up nearly 30 percent for the index. The Federal Reserve’s bond-buying, designed to stimulate the economy, helped stocks rise.
Krosby said a so-called correction in indexes - a drop of 10 percent from highs - would be healthy for the market, giving it a sturdier base on which to rally.
The Nasdaq is already well on its way. It is now 8 percent below its high in March. The S&P 500 is 4 percent off its recent high, set April 2.
Among tech stocks making big moves Friday, Netflix fell 2.4 percent, Amazon dropped 1.7 percent, and Google’s new Class C shares were down 1.9 percent.
Treasury prices rose. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.62 percent from 2.65 percent late Thursday.
Information for this article was contributed by Steve Rothwell of The Associated Press.
Business, Pages 32 on 04/12/2014