Slow Job Growth, High Oil Prices Drag Stocks Down

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Stocks fell on Friday after a government report showed the slowest job growth in nearly two years, sparking investor worry about the health of the economy, and crude oil prices topped $55 a barrel.


The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 92.52 points, or 0.9 percent, to close at 10,460.97. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index dropped 8.27 points, or 0.7 percent, to 1,196.02. The Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 26.37 points, or 1.3 percent, to 2,071.43.


Before the market opened, the Labor Department said only 78,000 jobs were added to U.S. non-farm payrolls in May, the weakest job growth since August 2003. The number was down significantly from the 274,000 new jobs in April and far less than the 185,000 economists had forecast.


And a barrel of light crude settled at $55.03, up $1.40, on the New York Mercantile Exchange.


Among local companies, shares of National Lampoon Inc. jumped 26 percent to $4.80 after the L.A-based entertainment firm announced its new TV program “National Lampoon’s Strip Poker” will debut in June on pay-per-view service InDemand. The show, hosted by Kato Kaelin, is a parody of the Texas Hold ‘Em poker phenomenon, National Lampoon said in a press release.


And Occidental Petroleum Corp. rose 0.9 percent to $75.42 after the Federal Trade Commission cleared the L.A.-based company for the purchase of the chemical business of Birmingham, Ala.-based Vulcan Materials Co., provided that Occidental sells one of the plants. Occidental agreed to sell Vulcan’s chemical facility and assets in Port Edwards, Wis., to ensure that the acquisition won’t reduce competition in the sale of certain chemicals.


On the down side, shares of Global ePoint fell 6.8 percent to $2.88 after the City of Industry-based maker of security technology products said it entered into a letter of intent to acquire Astrophysics Inc., a privately held maker of X-ray scanning security, in a stock and cash transaction. Global ePoint will pay $10 million cash and give 50.1 percent of its outstanding common stock and options to Astrophysics.


And Diodes Inc. dipped 5.6 percent to $30.14 after the Westlake Village-based semiconductor company’s stock was downgraded to “neutral” from “buy” by analyst Gary Mobley at B. Riley & Co.

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