February 10th, 2012

S&P 500 – U.S. stocks fell, snapping a five- week-rally for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, amid concern plans to help Greece avoid default were unraveling.

Citigroup Inc. (C), Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Corp. (BAC) dropped more than 1.2 percent to pace losses in financial companies. Commodity producers retreated as Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. (FCX), Alcoa Inc. (AA) and Halliburton Co. (HAL) slid at least 1.2 percent. LinkedIn Corp., the biggest professional-networking website, jumped 10 percent after it reported sales that more than doubled and forecast higher 2012 revenue.

The S&P 500 declined 0.8 percent to 1,340.92 as of 9:39 a.m. New York time. The benchmark gauge for American equities has fallen 0.3 percent since Feb. 3, snapping the longest weekly rally since January 2011. The Dow Jones Industrial Average decreased 101.57 points, or 0.8 percent, to 12,788.89 today.

“We’ve had a flip-flop that triggered global selling,” Frederic Dickson, who helps oversee $28 billion as chief market strategist at D.A. Davidson & Co. in Lake Oswego, Oregon, said in a telephone interview. “Investors are responding to the sudden change in direction or the lack of resolution of the Greek/European problem that they felt was resolved.”

Equities followed a global slump as emergency talks of euro-area finance chiefs broke up late last night with Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker saying Greece must turn its budget cuts into law, flesh out 325 million euros in spending reductions and have its major party leaders sign up to the program so they don’t retreat after upcoming elections.

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