NEW YORK: News that Spain's economy entered another
recession
renewed worries about the fragility of Europe's finances Monday and
nudged stocks lower. The market ended its first losing month this year.
The Standard & Poor's 500 index slipped 5.45 points to close at
1,397.91. For April, it was down 0.8 per cent, its first month in the
red since November.
The Spanish government said that the
country's economy shrank in the first three months of the year, the
second straight quarter of contraction.
The worry is that
Spain's heft could make it difficult to rescue. Its economy is roughly
twice the size of the three other countries that have tapped the
European Union for bailout loans added together -- Greece, Portugal and
Ireland.
In the US, a drop in an index of Midwestern
manufacturing and a slowdown in consumer spending last month added to
worries that the economy is losing steam.
The Institute for
Supply Management said its Chicago business barometer fell in April to
the lowest level in more than two years. Coming after two other weak
readings for the regions around New York and Philadelphia, the market
reaction to the Chicago report could have been much worse, said Clark
Yingst, chief market analyst at the brokerage Joseph Gunnar.
``It's very bad news in my opinion,'' Yingst said. ``I'd have thought the market would come under more pressure than it has.''
Weaker earnings reports from health insurer Humana and the owner of the
New York Stock Exchange, NYSE Euronext, also weighed on stock indexes.
The
Dow
Jones industrial average slipped 14.68 points to close at 13,213.63,
narrowly avoiding its first monthly loss since September. The Nasdaq
composite fell 22.84 points to 3,046.36. It posted a monthly loss of 1.5
per cent.
Growing concerns about
Spain
knocked European markets lower on Monday. Spain's main stock index, the
IBEX 35, sank 1.9 per cent. France's CAC-40 lost 1.6 per cent.
The dollar and US Treasury prices edged up as investors parked money in low-risk assets.
Ratings agency Standard & Poor's downgraded Spain's government debt to just three notches above junk Friday. On Monday
S&P lowered its rating for 11 Spanish banks, which are loaded with bad debt from a collapsed housing market.
Among stocks making big moves:
_ Barnes & Noble jumped 52 per cent on news that it will team up
with Microsoft to house the digital and college businesses of the
bookseller and create a Nook application for Windows 8. The companies
said they may separate those businesses entirely. That could mean a
stock offering, sale, or some other kind of deal. Microsoft's stock was
flat.
_Health insurer Humana fell 8 per cent to after
reporting a large drop in first-quarter profit as the company paid out
more in claims. The results fell short of Wall Street's expectations.
_ NYSE Euronext, owner of the New York Stock Exchange, lost 5 per cent
after reporting that its income plunged in the first three months of the
year. Revenues from its trading business were weak and the company had
to abandon a merger with the European exchange operator Deutsche Boerse.
_ Sunoco jumped 20 per cent, the most of any stock in the
S&P 500. The fuel-refining company agreed to be bought by Energy
Transfer Partners, an operator of natural gas pipelines, for $5.3
billion.