Stocks decline for fourth straight week

NEW YORK -- A battered stock market recovered from a sharp drop in late trading Friday but still posted its fourth straight weekly drop.

The Dow Jones industrials, down nearly 170 points in afternoon trading, clawed their way back to finish at 10,012.23 with a gain of 10.

For the week, the Dow lost 0.5 percent. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 3.08, or 0.3 percent, to 1,066.19 and ended down 0.7 percent for the week.

The Nasdaq rose 15.69, or 0.7 percent, to 2,141.12. It lost 0.3 percent for the week.

Investors are concerned that European governments will have trouble getting their massive deficits under control. The Labor Department, meanwhile, offered only scant hope of improvement in the jobs market.

"Clearly we've entered the worry, fear camp," said Rob Lutts, president and chief investment office at Cabot Money Management. "It's a very fragile investor psychology today. It doesn't take much ... to send them running for the hills."

The Federal Reserve also said that consumers borrowed less for an 11th straight month in December but that total borrowing fell far less than expected. That fueled hopes that consumer spending will increase.

The market pulled off its lows in the last hour of trading as the dollar came off its highs. A rising dollar hurts commodity prices, which become more expensive for foreign buyers when the dollar climbs.

But for the second straight day, there was unsettling economic news. On Thursday, the Dow fell 268 points on growing worries about the global economy.

The U.S. unemployment rate unexpectedly fell in January to 9.7 percent from 10 percent, the government reported, even though analysts expected an uptick.

At the same time, however, employers cut 20,000 jobs, more than the 5,000 economists expected. The two numbers are calculated from different surveys.

Timothy Speiss, head of Eisner LLP's Personal Wealth Advisors group, said the improving unemployment rate was a good sign, but that investors are well aware that the problems in the economy that have stocks falling in recent weeks are still there.

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