Dow loses
214 points

The Dow Jones industrial average plunged 214 points today in response to rising energy prices and poor earnings from General Electric and Citigroup.

The Dow fell 2.7 percent for the week after a New Year's rally that sent the index soaring above the 11,000 mark for the first time since June 2001. For the week, the S&P 500 was down 1.9 percent and Nasdaq declined 2.85 percent.

The Dow was down 1.96 percent today to 10,667. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index fell 24 points, or 1.85 percent, finishing at 1,261. The tech-based Nasdaq Composite Index lost 54 points, or 2.36 percent, to end at 2,248.

Earnings results from GE and Citgroup were just short of the expectations of analysts, but they would have needed blockbuster reports to satisfy Wall Street's overblown expectations, said Rick Pendergraft, an equity trader at Schaeffer's Investment Research, according to the Associated Press.

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"The ramp up we had into earnings let you know that people were expecting big things," Pendergraft said. "Any time we go into an earnings season and the market is overbought, it sends up a caution flag for me."

The price of light crude oil shot up $1.36 per barrel to $68.55 on news of increasing tensions in the nuclear standoff with Iran and Osama bin Laden's threat of terrorist attacks in the U.S.

The Dow's January rally was fueled by expectation the Federal Reserve would soon end its series of interest rate increases, but those gains largely were wiped out by today's plunge.

Susan Malley, chief investment officer of Malley Associates Capital Management, said, "Earnings haven't been disastrous thus far, we've just had some big names that were a bit conservative in their outlooks,"

Malley said the news is "not terribly bad, it just has not met the expectations of the investing community."

GE stock fell $1.37 to $33.31 after fourth-quarter profit declined 46 percent. Citigroup shares were down $1.96 to $45.98.