Stocks lose more ground on wild ride

Traders work the floor
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock exchange today in New York City. Markets were volatile in morning trading with the Dow falling almost 700 points and then recovering to close down 128 points for the day. Wall Street shares recouped heavy losses from an opening plunge Friday in highly volatile action amid a worldwide stock meltdown. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, following seven brutal losing sessions, fell briefly below 8,000 points at the open, or nearly 700 points, before a sharp rebound.
TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images

Stocks closed lower again today with the Dow industrials posting their eighth straight decline.

The Dow Jones industrial average finished with a loss of 128 points at 8,451 and down 1,817 points on the week. Declining issues on the New York Stock Exchange led losers nearly 2-1 on volume of 10.9 billion shares. The Nasdaq composite index was actually up 4 points at the 1,649 level, but posted a loss of 298 for the week. Roughly 4.1 billion shares traded on the tech-heavy exchange. And the S&P 500 dropped 10 points, closing at 899, down 199 points for the week.

While the session was a volatile one, the losses today were nowhere as steep as yesterday's.

The Dow plunged nearly 700 points within minutes of opening this morning and then moved into positive territory with a gain of more than 100 points shortly before the closing bell.

Frozen credit markets and a loss of confidence in the world's financial system have caused the Dow to drop 21 percent in just 10 trading days.

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