NEW YORK, Nov 12 (AFP) - US markets this week ended an upward trend, bogged down Friday by worries about inflation, a weakening dollar and most of all, rebounding oil prices.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average, the main Wall Street indicator, was down 0.78 percent for the week, to close Friday at 10,456.91 points, ending a three-week upward swing.
The Nasdaq lost 0.71 percent to 2,070.63 points, after four weeks of growth.
The Standard and Poor's 500, with a broader sampling of stocks, was down 1.17 percent to 1,170.34 points.
"It was fine until today," said Art Hogan, strategist for Jefferies.
"We had a relatively routine week," he said.
"(On) a Friday, after being up three weeks, it's very difficult not to have a market that sells off."
The US market did not like the more than two-dollar rise Friday in the price of a barrel of crude, which once again edged toward 50 dollars, on worries about supplies as cold weather came to the United States and Europe, deepened by problems at a refinery in Venezuela.
Investors had difficulty swallowing the announcement on Tuesday that October producer prices showed their sharpest rise since 1990, up 1.7 percent over September.
The base index, without food and energy, showed a rise of 0.3 percent.
The fall of the dollar, which touched its lowest level against the euro Thursday, at 1.3074, and statements by the Federal Reserve chairman Friday completed the discouraging scene in New York.
Greenspan, who has made repeated warnings that action will have to be taken to rein in the deficit, said current account imbalances were not an automatic problem.
But he added that "cumulative deficits which result in a marked decline of a country's net international investment position -- as is occurring in the United States -- raise more complex issues."
Greenspan said that for the moment the United States was seeing only "limited indications" of foreign resistance to financing the deficit.
"Yet net claims against residents of the United States cannot continue to increase forever in international portfolios at their recent pace.
"Net debt service cost, though currently still modest, would eventually become burdensome," he said.
In late New York trade, the dollar stood at 1.5123 Swiss francs from 1.5171 Thursday.
The pound was at 1.8557 dollars from 1.8496 the previous day.
"Greenspan put a spook on the market," Hogan said.
However, Hogan said, there is good news. "The dollar story is not brand-new, we'll probably shake it off come Monday and for crude, it's not a demand thing but the fear of disruption of supply."
"Next week brings a more rational thought process and a return to the upward trend, from the brief aberration we saw today.
"All the action will happen on first two days," Hogan said.
11/20/2004 - 00:15 GMT - AFP