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Wall Street’s optimism confronted reality during the week. Reality won.

American International Group (AIG) dropped 8.8%. The insurer late Thursday posted $7.8 billion loss and unveiled the plan to raise $12.5 billion in capital. General Motors (GM) was the second-worst blue-chip after AIG falling 4.1%. FedEx also added some negative news to the mix. After the closing bell, the shipping company, an economic bellwether ...

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It was a respectable week for stocks overall, helped by another cut in short-term interest rates by Federal Reserve. While investors responded positively to the employment report, analysts said it reflects a stalled economy. Friday, the Fed unveiled an expansion of its Term Auction Facility to provide extra cash to struggling banks.

The Standard and Poor 500 index (C Fund) gained 1.1% for the week. Treasury bonds fe ...

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Investors shrugged off soaring oil prices and crumbling consumer confidence to push stocks higher Friday with a hope the credit crisis might be waning. The consumer survey also found that inflation expectations are rising. Underlining that worry, crude oil surged.

Some Wall Street analysts believe that the worst may be over. Oil hit another record high but has pulled back. The dollar has finally started to show som ...

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The U.S. economy lost 80,000 jobs in March, the biggest drop in five years, as weakness in the labor market spread beyond housing and finance to engulf a broad swath of businesses. The bigger than expected employment drop keeps pressure on policy makers at the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates aggressively when they meet at the end of April.

Stocks mounted a valiant effort to move higher Friday in the face of bad news ...

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The stock market tried but failed to shake off its worries Friday, tying a grim ribbon on a mostly downbeat week. For each bit of good news Friday, there was bad news to offset it. Standard & Poor 500 index (C Fund) fell 1.1% on the week and is down 10% this year.

A Commerce Department report on personal income and spending was not entirely abysmal raising hopes the economy might yet avoid a deep recession. Oil futures ...

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We just survived another crazy week on the Wall Street. Stock indexes skyrocketed on Thursday after Feds introduced their plan to improve liquidity crisis. On Friday stocks opened higher, boosted by better-than-expected inflation data, before new developments in financial sector pushed all major US stock indexes down. Bear Sterns turned to JP Morgan Chase and the Federal Reserve for a 28-day loan of yet undetermine size, sparking concer ...

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Another brutal week on the Street… Investors ran away from signs that credit crunch is squeezing Main Street sending stocks tumbling. The blue chip average (C Fund) went down 2.8% last week. The reason behind drop on Friday was a Labor Department report that showed that nonfarm payrolls fell by 63,000 in February after dropping 22,000 in January.

Crude oil gained $3.31 a barrel, or 3.3% for the week to $105.15.

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Friday selloff leaves the stock market in a rut, and it may go in deeper before it digs itself out.

With market unable to muster any conviction about the future, it has been trading in a narrow range despite violent moves in both directions. The pattern continued this past week. After a burst of optimism at the start, stocks tumbled as fears bubbled anew about credit markets and the economy.

In the w ...

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Stocks ended the week with gains after a sharp turnaround late Friday undid losses recorded for the most of the day and the second half of the week on concerns about the US economy. That recovery highlights how important the bond insurers have become to confidence in financial system. They guarantee principal and interest repayment on both low-risk municipal bonds and the riskier complex debt instruments that have come under pressure durin ...

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After beginning the week with a bounce, stocks ended it with a slid, dragged down by renewed worries about the economy and credit markets.

Stocks fought to rebound from Thursday's decline but failed, spending most of Friday in the red after a raft of troubling economic news. The University of Michigan said its measure of consumer sentiment plunged to the lowest level in 16 years. The New York Federal Reserve's index of ...