Stocks slip on news of flat consumer spending

Disappointing news on consumer spending helped pull stocks lower Friday in a quiet end to the market's worst month in more than a year.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index closed August with a loss of 3.1 percent, while the Dow Jones industrial average lost 4.4 percent. Both had their biggest one-month drop since May 2012.

Questions weighing on investors' minds include the government's stimulus program and the wild card of Syria.

Before the market opened Friday, the Commerce Department said that Americans' income and spending barely rose in July. Both increased just 0.1 percent. The scant rise suggests economic growth is off to a weak start for the second half of the year. It followed other reports showing steep drops in new-home sales and orders for long-lasting manufactured goods in July.

The major indexes headed lower from the opening bell and never recovered. The S&P dropped .32 percent to close at 1,632.97. Retail stores and other consumer-discretionary companies led eight of the index's 10 industry groups to slight losses.

The Dow Jones Industrial fell 30.64 points to close at 14,810.31, and the Nasdaq composite dropped .84 percent to 3,589.87. -- AP