US stocks slide as investors hold

The Dow Jones industrial average rclosed down 27 points at 12,938

Published: 9:22pm, 22nd February 2012
Updated: 8:56am, 23rd February 2012

A day after the Dow hit 13,000, investors took a break.

Stocks closed lower on Wednesday for the first time in four trading days. The Dow Jones industrial average lost 27.02 points to finish at 12,938.67. The day before, it briefly passed 13,000 for the first time since May 2008.

Some investors worried about the details of a bailout deal reached for Greece this week. But analysts said investors were mostly in a holding pattern after seeing the market hit an important psychological mark.

On Thursday, the government will give the latest reading on unemployment claims. They have been declining steadily and fell last week to 348,000, the lowest since March 2008.

The Dow has lost ground on just four of the past 11 trading days. It has been trading at or near four-year highs for three weeks and is up 6% this year. On Wednesday, the Dow traded in a range of just 63 points. Over the past year, it has had smaller trading ranges on only nine other days. The average daily range over that time has been 181 points.

Financial stocks led the market lower. Investors worried that a 170 billion dollar bailout for Greece, announced on Tuesday, would not be enough to keep the debt-laden country from eventually defaulting and possibly leaving the euro currency group.

Greece says the bailout, plus an agreement it hopes to secure from investors to take losses on Greek government bonds, will keep it in the euro group. "There is no issue of the country's financial collapse," Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said.

The Greek economy is entering its fifth year of recession. Fitch ratings agency downgraded Greece further into junk status Wednesday, to a rating of C, one notch above default.

In the US, the Standard & Poor's 500 lost 4.55 points to close at 1,357.66. The Nasdaq composite index declined 15.40 points to 2,933.17. Volume was lighter than average, 3.6 billion shares.

All three major averages are well ahead for the year. The Dow is up 5.9%, the S&P 8% and the Nasdaq 12.6%.