Stock Market

Three-dollar-a-gallon gasoline is back, and nobody's happy about it. Oh, wait -- actually, there are plenty of people happy about it: the commodity speculators who've been helping to drive up prices of oil and other raw materials for the last five months. The price of crude reached an eight-month high of $72.68 a barrel Thursday, before slipping to end Friday at $72.04. Oil now is up 113% from its five-year low in December.

Stocks capped a choppy week of trading with a mixed performance Friday. Two of the three major indexes ended down for the day and the week. The Dow Jones industrial average slid 34.01 points, or 0.4%, to 8,438.39. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 1.36 points, or 0.2%, to 918.90. But the Nasdaq composite index rose 8.68 points, or 0.5%, to 1,838.22. For the week, the Dow lost 101 points, or 1.2%, the S&P index fell 0.3% and the Nasdaq rose 0.6%. The Dow is down 3.

Stocks fell in Europe and Asia on Friday, extending the MSCI World Index's longest weekly losing streak since March, as reports on retail sales and the service industry added to concern that the first global recession since World War II will persist. U.S. markets were closed for the Fourth of July holiday. Metro AG, Germany's biggest retailer, slipped 2.5% as European retail sales dropped more than economists estimated. Seven & I Holdings Co.

The government's ugly report this week on June employment showed that U.S. companies still are cutting jobs at a fast pace. But even as stocks stumbled over the news Thursday, many economists were reminding their Wall Street clients of what history tells us about the job picture: It's one of the last things to improve as the nation emerges from a recession. And there are reasons why that may be even more true this time around.

Wall Street was back in panic mode this week. But this is the kind of panic that adds to your net worth instead of annihilating it. Buoyed by another batch of surprisingly good corporate earnings reports, investors drove stock prices sharply higher for a second straight week. Buyers wanted into the game while potential sellers were reluctant to part with their shares. That's the simple setup for a powerful rally. In just two weeks the Standard & Poor's 500 index has surged 11.4%.

Question: I have several thousand dollars in savings and wonder whether I should start buying stocks again or think about my mortgage. My broker is recommending some stocks, but I'm not sure after losing a lot of money in the market. I want to retire in a couple of years, and still have about 15 years left on my mortgage. M.D., Chicago Answer: Though it sounds like you are wondering whether stocks are a good deal, that's not particularly relevant to your situation.

Jack Ablin figured the phone calls would be coming. Like many money managers, he was faced last winter with clients who wanted out of the stock market, period, as share prices collapsed to 12-year lows and the end of civilization seemed like a reasonable possibility. Now, with stocks up 50% or more since March -- and the sun still rising each morning -- "guys who pulled the plug want in again," says Ablin, who oversees $60 billion as chief investment officer at Harris Private Bank in Chicago.

NEW YORK -- With the stock market in a bit of a news lull, investors weren't making any big moves. Stocks fell today in absence of any major corporate or economic developments. Investors are also cautious ahead of earnings reports from major retailers and a two-day meeting of the Federal Reserve on interest rates that starts Tuesday. The day's modest action wasn't surprising after major indicators jumped 1 percent last week, including a surge Friday in response to the government's stronger-than-expected jobs report.

NEW YORK -- Pessimism about the global economy is reasserting itself in the stock market. Stocks are falling in early trading, following the lead of overseas markets. The Shanghai stock market has dropped 5 percent on concerns about a sustainable economic recovery in China, and the major indexes in Europe are all lower. In the U.S., investors are also battling concerns about consumer spending. Hewlett-Packard Co. is the latest big company to report ongoing weakness in sales, which sent its profit down 19 percent in the latest quarter.

Stung by punishing losses in the bear market, some individual investors are souring on traditional buy-and-hold investing in favor of aggressive trading aimed at scoring big gains. Trading at online brokerages has soared in recent months as investors have tried to capitalize on rising securities markets. But individual investors increasingly are embracing strategies that carry outsized risks. In some cases, for example, investors have ventured into a relatively new type of investment product designed to magnify the movement of the underlying markets.