War fears depresses stock

A POSSIBLE war, an economy unable to regain its health and the prospects of more weakness in corporate earnings kept US stocks stuck in the red yesterday.

Around 1:30pm ET, the Dow Jones industrial average (down 78.70 to 8353.91), the Nasdaq composite (down 12.41 to 1355.48) and the Standard & Poor's 500 index (down 9.51 to 880.15), all were about 1% lower.

With trading volume exceptionally weak in the holiday-shortened week, all three market indicators looked set to end the week with losses.