What a Week: Upbeat Finish

Meanwhile, the S&P 500 finished Wednesday less than 1% from its March 2000 all-time closing high of 1527.46. The Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Index also hit a 52-week high Wednesday in the wake of positive comments by Texas Instruments (TXN Quote), which boosted the chip sector generally. But the Nasdaq was restrained by a sell-the-news reaction to Cisco's (CSCO Quote) earnings and Dendreon's (DNDN Quote) pummeling, after the Food & Drug Administration requested more clinical data on the company's prostate cancer drug, Provenge.

Thoughts of records and soft landings evaporated Thursday, as the major averages suffered their biggest declines since mid-March, the Dow losing 150 points. Major averages were hurt by weakness in energy stocks, profit-taking in names like Alcoa, as well as declines in Amgen (AMGN Quote) and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ Quote) after the FDA voted for more restrictions and clinical trials for anemia drugs.

Thursday's headlines were dominated by weak April same-store sales data from retailers such as Wal-Mart (WMT Quote) and Federated (FD Quote). Along with a profit shortfall from Whole Foods (WFMI Quote), the sales reports revived concerns about the consumer's health amid the housing market's ongoing weakness and high gasoline prices. Additionally, a wider-than-expected March trade deficit report suggests first-quarter GDP will be revised down to less-than 1% from an already tepid preliminary report of 1.3%.

"People are probably going to become even more concerned as second-quarter data is released," Jane Caron, chief economic strategist at Dwight Asset Management, a Vermont-based firm with over $60 billion in assets, said on Thursday's "The Real Story" podcast. "We saw weak chain store sales data for April [which] points to real consumption growth really quite slow. We're looking at a fairly weak economic environment."