Wall St. falls as bank stocks fail to inspire; Syria conflict weighs

NEW YORK — Financial stocks led a drop on Wall Street on Friday as results from big banks failed to enthuse and fear of broader conflict in Syria further unnerved investors.

The S&P banks index fell 2.6% and the broader S&P financial index lost 1.6%, the most among the 11 major S&P sectors.

Shares of JPMorgan Chase & Co., the biggest US bank by assets, dropped 2.7% after the bank’s quarterly profit fell slightly short of expectations. JPMorgan shares were the biggest weight on the S&P 500.

Wells Fargo sank 3.4% after the bank said it may have to pay a penalty of $1 billion to resolve investigations, while Citigroup dropped 1.6% despite beating profit estimates.

Weak loan growth weighed on bank shares, said RJ Grant, head of trading at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods in New York.

US stocks extended losses on Friday after the State department said that it had proof that Syria carried out a recent chemical weapons attack in the town of Douma.

The renewed possibility of a strike in Syria “is enough to cause heartburn for the market,” said Robert Phipps, a director at Per Stirling Capital Management in Austin, Texas. “There’s a ton of uncertainty right now so investors don’t want to go into the weekend particularly long.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 122.91 points, or 0.5% to 24,360.14; the S&P 500 lost 7.69 points or 0.29% to 2,656.3; and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 33.60 points or 0.47% to 7,106.65.

Still, for the week, the S&P 500 rose 1.99%, the Dow gained 1.79%, and the Nasdaq added 2.77%.

Friday’s bank results kicked off earnings season, with Thomson Reuters data predicting profits at S&P 500 companies increased by 18.6% in the first quarter from a year ago, their biggest rise in seven years.

While the US economy is performing well, geopolitical issues are weighing on stock markets this year.

Senior Russian lawmakers said on Friday that the lower house of parliament would consider draft legislation giving the Kremlin powers to ban or restrict a list of US imports, reacting to new US sanctions on Russian tycoons and officials.

Boeing fell 2.4% after a Russian lawmaker said the country may stop supplying titanium to the company.

Issues with engines for Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner planes also weighed on the company’s shares.

The top gainer among S&P sectors was energy, up 1.1% as oil prices rose.

Tesla rose 2.1% after founder Elon Musk said the electric car maker would be profitable in the third and fourth quarters and would not need to raise any money this year.

Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 1.28-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.64to-1 ratio favored decliners.

Volume on US exchanges was 5.78 billion shares, compared to the 7.22 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days. —