By AMY BALDWIN
AP Business Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — If investors haven't thrown in the proverbial towel yet, they must be getting close — right?
That's what big selloffs like this week's would suggest, what with the Dow industrials dropping nearly 580 points since Monday. That included a 282-point drop Wednesday, the blue chips' biggest one-day loss since September, and their first close below 9,000 since October.
The market's losses are no doubt stunning. But, ``to get the stock market back on track, we have to work on the emotions of investors,'' said Thomas F. Lydon, president of Global Trends Investments in Newport Beach, Calif.
Wall Street observers like Lydon warn there's no reason for investors put a stop to their widespread dumping of stocks, which has been in force for nearly eight weeks now.
``This market has completely broken the spirit of investors,'' said Al Mirman, strategist at V Finance in Sarasota, Fla. ``It is going to take a good year for investors' confidence to be reinstated.''
Forget about an earnings recovery, analysts say, because investors aren't going to start buying stocks again until they see an end in sight to the corporate accounting scandals.
``True, we need better (earnings) numbers, but we need numbers we can trust,'' Mirman said.
The Dow last closed below 9,000 on Oct. 2 when it stood at 8,950.59 as it was still recovering from its post-Sept. 11 losses. Before the terror attacks, the Dow had not had a lower finish since Dec. 16, 1998, when it stood at 8,790.60.
Wednesday's loss was the Dow's biggest one-day decline since Sept. 20, when it fell 382.92. The blue chips fell nearly 12 more points on Thursday.
Meanwhile, through Thursday, the Standard & Poor's 500 was down more than 60 points for the week and the Nasdaq composite index off more than 70. The S&P has closed at levels not seen since November 1997, while the Nasdaq has had its lowest close since May 1997.
This week's trading has brought new reasons to question the strength and pace of a business recovery.
For example, General Motors and Ford have been hit by brokerage downgrades. Investors are feeling that there are few, if any, safe havens in the market.
Investors might not be happy sitting on Wall Street's sidelines, but with the problem-ridden market headed for a third straight losing year they see no reason to budge. After a string of accounting debacles at such firms as WorldCom, Xerox and Enron and more than two years of declines on Wall Street, investors can't be blamed for sitting on Wall Street's sidelines.
Lydon said, ``Confidence is so low that the average investor is saying, 'I am fine keeping (my money) in a money market account at 1.5 percent. And when I see the worst is over, maybe I'll think about putting more money in the stock market.''