US stocks fell from 29-month highs on Friday as investors worried about escalating anti-government protests in Egypt and as Amazon and Ford shares tumbled after results. Nasdaq quotations for its main stock indexes suffered an outage of nearly one hour at the open, causing confusion among traders. Nasdaq OMX Group has not explained what caused the problem.
The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 136.23 points, or 1.14 percent, to 11,853.60. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index fell 17.65 points, or 1.36 percent, to 1,281.89. The Nasdaq Composite Index lost 59.10 points, or 2.14 percent, to 2,696.18.
The Dow's decline threatened to end a streak of eight weeks of gains in the blue chip index. The S&P 500 was on track to close below its 14-day moving average for the first time in two months. Ford Motor Co slumped 11.8 percent to $16.57 after a steep drop in quarterly profit due to a charge for debt payments. Rival automaker General Motors Co lost 5.2 percent to $36.64.
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