Stocks fall after surprisingly weak retail sales

NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks fell in afternoon trading after the government reported surprisingly weak retail sales figures.

The Commerce Department said retail sales rose for the seventh straight month in January, but the increase was the smallest since June. Retail sales rose just 0.3 percent, half of what economists had predicted.

Kim Caughey Forrest, equity research analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group, said higher prices for gasoline and raw materials are beginning to be passed along to consumers. That’s hurting retail sales and spending, she said.

“Without wage gains,” she said, “people are going to buy less.”

Energy companies led stocks lower. Exxon Mobil Corp. lost 2 percent, the largest drop for any of the 30 large companies that make up the Dow Jones industrial average. Exxon Mobil said it added 3.5 billion barrels of oil and gas last year to the company’s massive reserves, more than twice what Exxon produced in 2010.

The Dow fell 47, or 0.4 percent, to 12,220.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 5, or 0.3 percent, to 1,327. The Nasdaq composite index fell 10, or 0.3 percent, to 2,807.