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Standard & Poor's

Stocks fall for 2nd straight day; Dow down 106

Adam Shell
USA TODAY

Stocks fell for a second straight day Wednesday — with the Nasdaq dropping further below the 5000 level — as investors eye private-sector employment gains and await other jobs data.

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 106 points, or 0.6%, to 18,097. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 9 points, or 0.4%, to 2099.

The Nasdaq composite is dropped 13 points, or 0.3% to 4967.

Investors are pulling back slightly after the Dow and S&P 500 hit record high closes on Monday and the Nasdaq closed above 5000 for the first time in 15 years.

Wall Street this week is getting a hat trick of job-related data that will shed light on whether the stormy winter weather, West Coast port strike and continued troubles in the oil patch took a bite out of the U.S. job-creation machine in February.

The first of these, a pre-opening bell report from payroll processor ADP, shows that private employers hired 212,000 workers in February, adding more muscle to the frame of a growing U.S. labor force.

ADP's figure is slightly below the 218,000 new jobs economists were expecting, but virtually inline with the 213,000 jobs created by the private sector in January, according to Bespoke Investment Group.

The weekly read on first-time jobless claims comes Thursday. And the final and biggest data point, better known as the monthly jobs report, is set for release Friday.

Wall Street expects a dip in new jobs to around 240,000, Bespoke says, down from 257,000 in January. The unemployment rate is expected to tick down to 5.6% from 5.7%.

European stocks closed higher. Gains for France's CAC-40, Germany's DAX and Britain's FTSE were 1%, 1% and 0.4%, respectively.

The 19-country eurozone's economy is kicking into a higher gear thanks to falling oil prices and the lower euro, but the recovery is still far short of that experienced by the U.S. A brace of economic reports Wednesday point to economic activity picking up momentum after a year of stagnation, particularly in the crucial area of consumer spending.

In Asia, Japan's Nikkei 225 index fell 0.6% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng index dropped 1%. The Shanghai Composite gained 0.5%.

India's central bank on Wednesday unexpectedly cut a key interest rate by a quarter percentage point, the second such reduction this year as the bank lends support to government efforts to boost economic growth. The latest cut lowers the policy repo rate, at which commercial banks can borrow from the Reserve Bank of India, to 7.5%. The Reserve Bank of India also cut the rate by a quarter point in January.

China's Premier Li Keqiang is expected to lower this year's official growth target to 7% from last year's 7.5% when he announces the government's economic plans Thursday.

Stocks ended down Tuesday, with the Nasdaq stumbling back below 5000 as investors took profits ahead of economic reports later in the week.

Contributing: Charisse Jones, Associated Press.

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