Stocks Take a Tumble

Updated from 4:22 p.m. EST

Wall Street ended a chaotic week with fairly sizable losses on Friday as traders moved to pare their positions ahead of their two-day absence from the market.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 120.24 points, or 0.98%, to finish at 12,114.10, and the S&P 500 was off 16 points, or 1.14%, at 1387.17. The Nasdaq Composite slid 36.21 points, or 1.51%, to 2368.

On the Dow, 28 of its 30 components were in the red, pressured by a 2.9% loss in General Motors (GM Quote).

Meanwhile, pullbacks in Cisco (CSCO Quote), eBay (EBAY Quote), Amazon.com (AMZN Quote) and Sepracor (SEPR Quote) combined to sink the Nasdaq.

Roughly 3.37 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, and volume on the Nasdaq reached 2.39 billion shares. Losers outpaced winners 3 to 1.

The New York market was coming off a session in which it plunged at the open, including a dive of more than 200 points in the Dow. However, a solid report on the factory sector helped a comeback, and the index ended down only 34.29 points at 12,234.34.

Over the last five sessions, the Dow tumbled 4.2%, and the S&P 500 dropped 4.4%, handing both their worst weekly performances since early 2003. The Nasdaq plummeted 5.9% to notch its highest weekly percentage loss since August 2004.

"This isn't a good way to end this week. This is our first major correction, but it hasn't scared the daylights out of investors yet," said Paul Mendelsohn, chief investment strategist with Windham Financial. "I don't think the market has come down enough yet to shake out the weak investors. There is a massive change in psychology now."