Stock market down again; Dow under 12,000

Wall Street skidded sharply Friday, as worries about the economic recovery dragged down the three major indexes. The Dow Jones industrial average closed under 12,000 for the first time since March 18.

The Dow fell 172.45 points to 11,951.91, capping off a sixth week of losses. The index is down 6.7 percent from its 2011 high of 12,810.54 at the end of April.

"We've had a series of comparatively weaker economic data when put against numbers coming out in the first quarter of this year," said Mark Luschini, chief investment strategist at Philadelphia-based Janney Montgomery Scott LLC. But they "are not indicative of a recession," he said.

The Nasdaq and Standard & Poor's 500 also dropped by 1.53 percent to 2,643.73 and 1.4 percent to 1,270.98, respectively.

Friday's sell-off came after a report showed that China's exports to the United States and the European Union had weakened and as uncertainty lingered over how to resolve Greece's debt problems. The market has also had to digest last week's report that the nation added fewer jobs in May than expected while unemployment edged up to 9.1 percent from 9 percent. Late last month a major index showed housing prices were continuing to fall.

Luschini said the faster pace of recovery earlier in the year was "morphing into a moderating pace of expansion."

Despite signs of overall market weakness, Wendy Lanton, chief operations and compliance officer at Melville-based Lantern Investments Management, said their clients' long-term investments were on target.

"We have not had any sort of panic, or even at this point general concern from our customers," Lanton said. "What we believe right now is these are temporary blips."

Jeffrey Myers, a vice president and financial planner at Fusion Analytics in Manhattan who deals primarily with Long Island clients, said the declines of the past six weeks were part of the normal market cycle, which had seen months of gains previously. "Although market declines such as we've experienced in the last couple weeks are certainly emotional and unwelcome -- they are probably par for the course of a normal investment plan," Myers said.

The Dow is still above its low this year of 11,613.30, which it hit in March, and well above its 10-year low of 6,547.05 set in March 2009.

The economy has been dealt some unusual hits this year: the Japan earthquake, turmoil in the Middle East and spiking oil prices. "The stock market doesn't like uncertainty," said Jeffrey Friedman, senior market strategist, at Chicago-based Lind-Waldock, a division of MF Global. "Eventually we've got to get some good news or it will continue to grind down."