Turmoil on Wall St continues

As MarketWatch notes, the Bear made another call yesterday.

U.S. stocks plunged Friday, with credit concerns and a weak jobs report driving a sell-off that marked the Dow's third worst day of the year and steep weekly losses for the broader market.

Already on the decline, the pace of the sell-off quickened after a Bear Stearns Cos. conference call about the impact of bad home loans on its funds failed to reassure investors...

The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended 281.4 points lower at 13,181.9, with all of its 30 stocks closing down and the Dow taking a weekly loss of 0.7%.

The S&P 500 dropped 39 points to close at 1,432.81 and a 1.8% loss for the week, while the Nasdaq Composite dived 64 points, or 2.5%, to close at 2,511, for a weekly drop of 1.9%.

Yesterday's nonfarm payroll data didn't help.

Nonfarm payrolls grew by a lower-than-expected 92,000 in July, the smallest gain since February. And the nation's unemployment rate rose to 4.6%, up from 4.5% in June and the highest reading since January, the Labor Department reported.

Nor did the ISM nonmanufacturing index, which fell to 55.8 in July from 60.7 in June.

Growth in service industries in the euro area, though, was maintained in July with the Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc reporting yesterday that its services index stayed at 58.3, the highest since June last year.