Wall Street turns lower after unemployment report

SOURCES FROM YAHOO FINANCE

Thursday March 19, 12:45 pm ET
By Stephen Bernard and Sara Lepro, AP Business Writers
NEW YORK (AP) -- Wall Street turned lower Thursday after a report on jobless claims gave mixed messages about the state of the economy.

Stocks rose early on, but a decline in financial shares pushed the market lower in early afternoon trading.

Another increase in people receiving jobless benefits dented the market's recent burst of confidence, which has driven the Dow Jones industrial average up 14 percent over the past seven days.

Investors had initially cheered another part of the employment report, which showed the number of new initial claims for jobless benefits decreasing last week.
In midday trading, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 88.57, or 1.2 percent, to 7,398.01.

The number of initial requests for unemployment insurance last week dropped to a seasonally adjusted 646,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 658,000, which exceeded economists' estimates. But the number of people continuing to receive benefits set a new record for the eighth straight week, jumping 185,000 to a seasonally adjusted 5.47 million.

Analysts saw Thursday's decline as a slight pause to the enthusiastic buying that has marked the advance that began last week.

"We've had a lot of very positive news that I believe has caught a lot of people by surprise," said Kent Engelke, managing director at Capital Securities Management in Glen Allen, Va.

Stock and bonds both surged on Wednesday following news that the Federal Reserve would pump more than $1 trillion into the economy by buying Treasury bonds and increasing its purchases of mortgage-backed debt securities.

The intended effect of the actions is to break a logjam in lending and lower interest rates, making it less expensive for consumers to borrow for everything from homes to cars to credit cards.

But analysts said some of Thursday's decline could be attributed to investors assessing just how effective the moves will be.

"Yesterday was viewed as a positive," said Todd Salamone, senior vice president of research at Schaeffer's Investment Research. "But there was still some debate as to whether the move was bold enough and what the implications are down the road, the unintended consequences. That debate could be causing some hesitation."

One of those possible consequences is the potential for runaway inflation, Salamone said.