Stock prices fell for the third session in a row as anxiety mounted about the quality of corporate earnings and technology stocks retreated. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average dropped 167.61 - or by 1.8 per cent - to close at 8,841.58. Investors took little notice of a government report showing that first-time applications for unemployment benefits rose by 1,000 last week. Instead, they responded to a continuing flow of gloomy earnings reports from multinational companies whose exports are suffering from a severe downturn in world markets.

The Standard and Poor's 500 fell 18.47 to 1,165.02. The technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index fell 34.47 to 2,015.95. The NYSE composite index fell 8.71 to 566.08.

Declining issues outnumbered advancers by a more than two-to-one margin on the New York Stock Exchange, with 928 up, 2,119 down and 491 unchanged. NYSE volume totalled 746.46 million shares.