NEW YORK–The stock mar­ket fell yes­ter­day as a poor earn­ings re­port from Ma­cy's cast doubt on the out­look for con­sumer spend­ing, a vi­tal com­po­nent of the US econ­o­my.Oth­er de­part­ment store stocks al­so fell af­ter Ma­cy's re­port­ed dis­ap­point­ing earn­ings for the sec­ond quar­ter and cut its fore­cast for the year.

The stock mar­ket's ear­ly sum­mer ral­ly has fiz­zled out af­ter a strong Ju­ly, and Au­gust is shap­ing up to be a lack­lus­tre month as many traders and in­vestors take their sum­mer breaks. The ma­jor in­dex­es have drift­ed low­er in the past week af­ter climb­ing to all-time highs at the start of the month.The S&P in­dex closed down 8.77 points, or 0.5 per cent, to 1,685.39 The in­dex has de­clined in six of the last eight trad­ing days and is flat for the month. In Ju­ly it jumped 5 per cent.

The Dow Jones in­dus­tri­al av­er­age was down 113.35 points, or 0.7 per cent, at 15,337.66, the biggest drop in six weeks. Twen­ty-two of the stocks in the 30-mem­ber in­dex de­clined.The Nas­daq com­pos­ite fell 15.17 points, or 0.5 per cent, to 3,669.27.In gov­ern­ment bond trad­ing yes­ter­day, the yield on the ten-year Trea­sury note slipped to 2.71 per cent from 2.72 per cent Tues­day.

In com­modi­ties trad­ing, the price of oil edged up 2 cents to US$106.85 a bar­rel. Gold rose US$12.90, or 1 per cent, to US$1,333.40 an ounce.