NEW YORK-Poor cor­po­rate earn­ings re­ports pound­ed the stock mar­ket Fri­day in a sour end to an oth­er­wise strong week of trad­ing. The Dow Jones in­dus­tri­al av­er­age fell more than 200 points for its worst day in four months.

Dis­ap­point­ing re­sults from three gi­ants of the Dow-Mi­crosoft, Gen­er­al Elec­tric and Mc­Don­ald's-were part­ly to blame. The Stan­dard & Poor's 500 in­dex fared even worse, as wide­spread wor­ries about com­pa­nies' abil­i­ty to keep churn­ing out bet­ter prof­its drove the broad­er mar­ket down.

Through Thurs­day, with 115 com­pa­nies in the S&P 500 re­port­ing, earn­ings have dropped 3.7 per cent com­pared with a year ear­li­er, ac­cord­ing to Thom­son Reuters, a fi­nan­cial da­ta provider, and ING, a fi­nan­cial com­pa­ny. "And once you get one quar­ter of neg­a­tive earn­ings, it's a pre­cur­sor," said Doug Cote, chief mar­ket strate­gist at ING In­vest­ment Man­age­ment in New York.

"It's the cock­roach the­o­ry: If you find one, there's prob­a­bly many more." Head­ing in­to this earn­ings sea­son, fi­nan­cial an­a­lysts had es­ti­mat­ed that cor­po­rate prof­its for Ju­ly through Sep­tem­ber would fall com­pared with the same pe­ri­od a year ago. That would be the first such de­cline in three years. The Dow sank 205.43 points, or 1.5 per cent, to close Fri­day at 13,343.51.

The S&P lost 24.15, or 1.7 per cent, to 1,433.19. The Nas­daq com­pos­ite in­dex, ham­mered by a sec­ond ug­ly day for Google, lost 67.25 points to 3,005.62, a 2.2 per cent de­cline. The big drops Fri­day left the Dow and S&P cling­ing to gains for the week. All ten in­dus­try groups in the S&P 500 fell, led by tech­nol­o­gy and ma­te­ri­als stocks.

Google con­tin­ued its slump, los­ing US$13.21 to US$681.79, a day af­ter its earn­ings re­port was ac­ci­dent­ly hours ahead of sched­ule. The re­port raised ques­tions for Google and oth­er In­ter­net com­pa­nies about ads that tar­get mo­bile de­vices.

It's been a tough week for tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies. IBM point­ed to Eu­rope's trou­bles and slow­ing busi­ness spend­ing when it post­ed weak­er rev­enue than an­a­lysts ex­pect­ed. In­tel, the world's largest mak­er of com­put­er chips, blamed the glob­al econ­o­my and slid­ing com­put­er sales for push­ing net in­come down.

The bad news kept pil­ing up Fri­day. Sag­ging PC sales and trou­ble in Eu­rope took a toll on Mi­crosoft's net in­come. Its stock lost 86 cents, or three per cent, to US$28.64. Mar­vell Tech­nol­o­gy Group and Ad­vanced Mi­cro De­vices, which al­so make chips, sank sharply.

Mc­Don­ald's prof­it shrank as a strong dol­lar hurt in­ter­na­tion­al re­sults, which ac­count for two-thirds of its busi­ness. The fast-food gi­ant's stock lost US$4.14, more than four per cent, to US$88.72. Gen­er­al Elec­tric, a bell­wether of the econ­o­my, fell three per cent. The com­pa­ny re­port­ed stronger prof­its ear­ly Fri­day, but its rev­enue missed Wall Street's ex­pec­ta­tions.

As cor­po­rate earn­ings roll in, banks and so-called con­sumer dis­cre­tionary com­pa­nies, which in­clude lux­u­ry stores and ho­tels, are pro­ject­ed to re­port the best growth. The loss­es left the Dow up just 0.1 per cent for the week. The S&P was up 0.3 per cent, and the Nas­daq was down 1.3 per cent.

Among oth­er stocks mak­ing big moves Chipo­tle Mex­i­can Grill plunged 15 per cent af­ter the bur­ri­to chain fore­cast that rev­enue growth would slow sharply next year. The stock fell US$42.93 to US$243. Cap­i­tal One Fi­nan­cial surged six per cent, mak­ing it the top per­former in the S&P 500. Cap­i­tal One's quar­ter­ly re­sults, re­port­ed late Thurs­day, eas­i­ly trumped an­a­lysts' es­ti­mates as prof­its jumped 47 per cent. Cap­i­tal One's stock gained US$3.45 to US$60.75.

Ad­vanced Mi­cro De­vices, the world's sec­ond-largest mak­er of mi­cro­proces­sors be­hind In­tel, plunged 17 per cent. AMD plans to cut 15 per cent of its work­force. AMD lost 44 cents to US$2.18.