Stocks finished modestly down on Monday despite cautious optimism that Congress would pass a debt ceiling resolution before the Tuesday default deadline. Also contributing to the decline was a US manufacturing report indicating that manufacturing slowed to its lowest rate in two years. With the debt ceiling issue temporarily dealt with, investors began to focus on the growing suspicion that the US economy is faltering once again. The Dow fell for the eighth consecutive session with a 265 point loss and the S&P 500 turned negative for the year on Tuesday. The major indexes finally broke their losing streak on Wednesday with a late day rally. On Thursday the S&P 500 experienced its worst one-day drop since February 2009 as investors fled in fear to the sidelines. The S&P 500 has lost nearly 11% in the last 10 trading days. On Friday, a better than expected jobs report sparked an early morning rally that quickly faded by noon, sending stocks deep into the red. However, after a roller coaster afternoon, the market finished near the unchanged mark for the day.

This was the worst week for stocks in more than two years when the country was in the midst of the Great Recession. Small cap stocks fared far worse than their large cap counterparts.
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