stock market suffers

Stocks suffer their worst week since November
A late-day rally can't undo the damage from earlier in the week. Unemployment hits a 25-year high. Apple slumps on a downgrade. Wells Fargo slashes its dividend. Coca-Cola will invest in China.
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By Charley Blaine and Elizabeth Strott
Despite a late-day rally on Friday, stocks suffered their worst weekly losses since November after a government report showed unemployment in February reaching the worst levels since 1983.
The Dow Jones industrials, down as much as 124 points at 3:20 p.m. ET, finished the day with a 33-point gain to 6,627. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index closed up 1 point to 683.
The Nasdaq Composite Index finished down 6 points to 1,294, mostly because of weakness in such key stocks as Apple (AAPL, news, msgs), Google (GOOG, news, msgs), Research In Motion (RIMM, news, msgs) and Amazon.com (AMZN, news, msgs).
Despite the rally, which appeared to be short-covering by speculators who had sold stocks short during the week, the Dow finished down 6.2% for the week, its worst loss since the week of Oct. 6, when it fell 18%. The S&P 500's 7% loss and the Nasdaq's 6.1% loss were their worst since the week of Nov. 17.
The selling extended the losses for the Dow and the broader S&P 500 to levels not seen since 1996. The Nasdaq finished at six-year lows.
The Dow and S&P 500 have now fallen more than 20% since Jan. 16, the day before President Barack Obama was sworn into office; the Nasdaq is off 15.4% The major averages are down more than 53% from their 2007 highs.
Stocks opened higher on Friday but quickly faded after the miserable February jobs report showed the economy is slumping badly since the recession began in December 2007.
The U.S. unemployment rate hit 8.1%, up from 7.6% in January and a 25-year high. At the same time, the Labor Department said employers shed 651,000 jobs in February, the 14th straight month of job declines.
Job losses since December 2007 now total an estimated 4.4 million.