Jobs, Sales Send Stocks Diving

The markets plummeted today amid poor jobs data and mixed retail sales, MarketWatch reports. Falling oil futures again failed to stimulate stocks as energy increasingly looks like a victim, not a perpetrator, of the economic slump. The Dow fell 344.65 to close at 11,188.23. The Nasdaq lost 74.69, closing at 2,259.04, and the S&P 500 shed 42.15, settling at 1,232.83.

New unemployment claims rose 15,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 444,000; economists had predicted a slight fall. Meanwhile, JC Penney and Kohl’s reported sales declines, though Wal-Mart posted a slight rise. “We've had a pretty good rally in the stock market from the lows in July,” one analyst told the Wall Street Journal, “but somehow sentiment has really never gotten that optimistic.”