Wall Street closes a down May with a loss
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange this week. The Dow lost 820 points for the month, its worst showing since May 2010. (May 30, 2012) Credit: AP
With a disappointing finish Thursday, the stock market closed what was by some measures its worst month in two years. Over five dismal weeks, Facebook fizzled, a debt crisis in Europe loomed, and nobody was in the mood to buy.
When May was mercifully over, the Dow Jones industrial average and other major indexes had erased most of the strong gains they built up through March and held on to in April.
The Dow lost 820 points for the month, its worst showing since May 2010. That month, investors were spooked by a one-day "flash crash" in stocks when a large trade overwhelmed computer servers.
This May, stocks limped to the finish. The Dow declined in all but five of 22 trading sessions, closing down 26.41 points Thursday to 12,393.45. The Standard & Poor's 500 index dropped 0.23 percent to close at 1,310.33. The Nasdaq composite index fell 0.35 percent to 2,827.34, and had its worst month in two years.
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