Stocks fall on Wall Street, head for another weekly loss

Stocks fell in afternoon trading on Wall Street Friday, keeping the major indexes on course for their second weekly decline in a row.

The S&P 500 fell 0.5%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.9% and the Nasdaq fell 0.1%.

Banks were the biggest weight on the market. JPMorgan Chase fell after reporting that its profits fell 14% in the latest quarter from a year earlier.

Traders were also disappointed to see that retail sales sank 1.9% in December after Americans cut their spending in the face of product shortages, rising prices and the onset of the omicron variant.