Another Down Day Leaves the Dow at 8000

Updated from 4:19 p.m. EST

Stocks in New York marked a dim start to the year, sealing losses of more than 8% for the month of January in the Dow and S&P, as the worst GDP number in a quarter century added to a chilling picture of an anemic economy.

Led by declines of 9% in Citigroup(C Quote), 7.7% in Alcoa(AA Quote) and 6.4% in Procter & Gamble (PG Quote), the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 148.15, or 1.8%, to 8000.86, and the S&P 500 fell 19.26 points, or 2.3%, to 825.88. The Nasdaq gave up 31.42, or 2.1%, to 1476.42.

For the week, the Dow lost 0.9%, the S&P shed 0.7%, and the Nasdaq was roughly flat. For the first month of 2009, however, they shed 8.7%, 8.6% and 6.4%, respectively.

Big movers for the day included Amazon(AMZN Quote) and networking gearmaker Juniper(JNPR Quote) - up 17.6% and down 16.7% -- on earnings and guidance .

While the Obama Administration turned its eyes to the aching middle class, Wall Street worried a bad-asset sequestering plan might be further from fruition, sending financial stocks lower again. Particularly disturbing was the stream of continually dour economic data that registered throughout the week.

In one of the most anticipated events, The Commerce Department reported gross domestic product, which measures total domestic goods and services output, fell at a 3.8% annual rate in the fourth quarter of 2008. This comes after a 0.5% decline in the third quarter and marks the first consecutive declines since 1991.

The figure was better than expectations, which were for a 5.4% decline, but it still marks the worst output since the first quarter of 1982.