Stocks -- and Everything Else -- Take a Big Fall
After seesawing through the summer between gut-wrenching triple-digit selloffs and euphoric triple-digit rallies, the stock market last week appeared to have finally made up its mind.</br></br>And it wasn't pretty.</br></br>Yet another wave of concern over European debt and fresh fears that the U.S. is sliding back into recession whacked investments across the board, from emerging markets to gold futures, small caps to blue chips.</br></br>The Dow Jones Industrial Average of 30 big stocks tumbled 6.4%, the Dow's worst week since Oct. 10, 2008. The broader Standard & Poor's 500-stock index finished down 6.5%, while the tech-dominiated Nasdaq Composite dropped 5.3%. Asian and European indexes logged similar declines.</br></br>Oil prices fell 9.2%. Silver fell 26%. And even gold, the market darling of the past year, dropped 9.6%.