Stocks head for a fifth straight week of losses

Stocks slumped again today after a weak employment report became the latest signal that the market's gains this year may have overshot an increasingly sluggish pace of economic growth.

The Dow Jones industrial average and the Standard & Poor's 500 index are both headed for a fifth straight week of losses. That would be the longest losing streak for the Dow since July 2004 and the longest since mid-2008 for the S&P. The Dow is still up 5.2 percent for the year, the S&P 500 3.8 percent.

The Dow fell 104 points, or 0.9 percent, to 12,144 in late afternoon trading. The S&P 500 fell 13, or 1 percent, to 1,299. The Nasdaq Composite index fell 41, or 1.5 percent, to 2,732.

Stocks had a strong start to the year, hitting their highest levels in nearly three years in late April. But the market has been sputtering since then as troubling signs emerged about the economy.

"The market has been too high relative to the trajectory we're actually on," said Andrew Wilkinson, senior market analyst with Interactive Brokers.