Stocks Tumbled Again on Europe Concerns

U.S. stocks posted broad losses Thursday as a jump in borrowing costs for France and Spain at government debt auctions gave investors fresh reason to worry about an impending European debt default. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 134.86 points, or 1.13%, to 11,770.73. The S&P 500 fell 20.78 points, or 1.68%, to 1,216.13. The Nasdaq Composite lost 51.62 points, or 1.96%, to 2,587.99.

Spanish 10-year government bond yields rose to 6.61%. Yields on 10-year Italian government bonds were above 7%. The Spanish Treasury on Thursday sold €3.562 billion ($4.79 billion) of benchmark 10-year paper at a maximum yield of 7.088%, which was the highest yield paid since the euro’s inception.

France’s government sold 6.98 billion euros ($9.4 billion) of BTAN notes of various maturities at an auction on Thursday, Reuters reported. The nation’s cost of borrowing over two and four years rose by half a percentage point compared to previous auctions, according to the Reuters report.

The U.S. economy should grow only moderately over the next two years, generating just enough jobs to slowly reduce unemployment, University of Michigan economists said Thursday.

Police arrested protesters who sat on the ground and blocked traffic into New York City’s financial district on Thursday, part of a day of mass gatherings in response to efforts to break up Occupy Wall Street camps nationwide.

Yelp Inc. filed papers Thursday with for an initial public offering that would make the consumer recommendations and daily deals the latest major online company to enter the public markets.