US stock market ends its worst week since 2011

Dampening investor sentiment, oil prices kept falling Thursday, with the US oil hitting the weakest level since late December 2003, as excess supply continued to weigh on the market. Trading in China was automatically suspended as a result.

China’s economic slowdown affects Asian stock markets.

The Dow Jones (DJIA, Dow Jones Industrial Average) dropped by more than 5% (911 points) over four days. The Nasdaq composite fell 89 points, or 1.9 percent, to 4,746. The inability of regulators in the world’s second-largest economy to quell the turmoil has heightened anxiety, with oil’s drubbing fueling a separate set of concerns: over the outlook for global inflation and its impact on central bank monetary policy. Apple rose $2.20, or 2.3 percent, to $98.65 and video game maker Electronic Arts gained $2.52, or 4 percent, to $64.98. Brent crude, the benchmark for worldwide oils, lost 48 cents to $33.75 a barrel in London. All 10 of the S&P 500 industrial sectors are trading lower.

The Dow is down 9.8 percent from its peak in May, and the S&P 500 has lost 8.8 percent since then.

A pair of Apple iPhone suppliers warned of lower revenues, lending credence to reports earlier in the week of cutbacks to the much-monitored product of the world’s biggest publicly traded company. Stocks in the United Kingdom and France are also down about 5% apiece.

ASIA’S DAY: China’s stock market also rose to end a tumultuous week.

Both the Dow and Nasdaq officially closed on Thursday in a “correction”, signaling the first 10 percent drop from previous highs since last summer.

Worries about China have been driven by a decline in the value of the yuan and disappointing economic data. Thursday’s selling was linked to weakness in the yuan, as the government’s decision to let the currency get weaker may be a bad sign for the health of China’s economy. The country’s stock market fell more than 7%, triggering a circuit breaker that halted trading after just 30 minutes.

“Institutional investors tend to sell during the beginning of the year because they have already received their yearly dividend payments, and their off-loading sprees will likely continue for a while, which will weaken the market”, Lee Kyung Min opined, as noted by Korea Joongang Daily Tuesday. “When we talk developed markets, Japan is the most heavily exposed to China, with Europe being in the middle, and last is the U.S”. China says its economy is growing at close to 7 percent, but many investors think that is inflated.

All eyes will be on the jobs report due out at 1330 GMT, with December’s non-farm payrolls and the unemployment rate. AbbVie fell $1.28, or 2.2 percent, to $55.93 and Endo International shed $1.99, or 3.5 percent, to $54.37. That helped send copper producer Freeport-McMoRan down 64 cents, or 10.5 percent, to $5.53.

In these pages, I wrote extensively a year ago on how the stock market spent 2015 putting in a major top for stock prices. Crude oil remains below $35 a barrel. The benchmark Shanghai Composite closed 2% higher on Friday.

Container Store slumped 41 percent a day after storage products retailer’s fourth-quarter profit forecast missed estimates. The stock dropped $3.36, or 12.6 percent, to $23.38.

Some retail stocks performed well. Declining volume at 8.6-to-1 is higher than normal, but the charts show mediocre volume and, thus, the lack of a true panic that could lead to a solid bottom.