Stocks End Volatile Week With Huge Drop

Specialists work at their post on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Friday, Nov. 9, 2007 in New York. Wall Street extended its slide Friday after Wachovia Corp. warned it will take quarterly loan losses due to its debt portfolio, raising investor concerns that the credit slump shows no sign of abating. The Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 150 points. (AP Photo/David Karp) (David Karp - AP)

Light, sweet crude for December delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange rose 86 cents to settle at $96.32 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Bond prices rose, with the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note falling to 4.22 percent from 4.27 percent late Thursday. Yields and prices move in opposite directions. The bond market will be closed Monday for the Veterans Day holiday observance; the stock market will be open. Meanwhile, both gold and the dollar were lower.

Financial stocks were among the hardest hit Friday, though the banks that warned about the fourth quarter finished mostly flat amid hopes that their announcements might be signaling the end of the current period's trouble. BofA rose 49 cents to $43.99, JPMorgan fell 32 cents to $42.29, and Wachovia was up 31 cents at $40.61.

Investors were uneasy about tech stocks after Qualcomm Inc., the nation's second-biggest maker of chips that run mobile phones, predicted that heightened competition and legal troubles will cause 2008 results to fall 4 percent to 7 percent below Wall Street projections.

Qualcomm fell $1.66, or 4.2 percent, to $38.10.

Cisco Systems Inc. was another drag on the technology sector. It fell $1.05, or 3.5 percent, to $28.58 after the company warned of a dramatic decline in domestic business orders.

Merck & Co. said it will pay $4.85 billion to settle thousands of lawsuits over its painkiller Vioxx _ a move considered to be the biggest drug settlement ever. The offer was finalized early Friday as Merck and the plaintiffs met with three of the four judges overseeing the claims. Merck rose $1.13, or 2.1 percent, to $55.90.

Walt Disney & Co. shares fell 89 cents, or 2.7 percent, to $32.74 after the entertainment company said late Thursday fiscal fourth-quarter profit rose 12 percent, driven by sports network ESPN and turnout at its U.S. theme parks. However, executives remain concerned about a Hollywood writers strike that began this week.

Declining shares led advancers by a better than 2 to 1 ratio on the New York Stock Exchange, where consolidated volume came to 4.53 billion shares, down from 5.35 billion Thursday.

Overseas, Japan's Nikkei stock average closed down 1.19 percent and Hong Kong's Hang Seng index rose 0.08 percent. Britain's FTSE 100 was down 1.21 percent, Germany's DAX index fell 0.09 percent, and France's CAC-40 shed 1.91 percent.

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The Dow Jones industrial average ended the week down 552.36, or 4.06 percent, at 13,042.74. The Standard & Poor's 500 index finished down 55.95, or 3.71 percent, at 1,453.70. The Nasdaq composite index ended down 182.44, or 6.49 percent, at 2,627.94.

The Russell 2000 index finished the week down 25.40, or 3.18 percent, at 772.38.

The Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 Composite Index _ a free-float weighted index that measures 5,000 U.S. based companies _ ended Friday at 14,709.29, down 559.53 points, or 3.66 percent, from 15,268.82 for the week. A year ago, the index was at 13,837.86.

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