Markets Close Lower as Investors Wait for Decision About Syria

American stocks fell in a thinly traded session on Friday as investors avoided making large bets before a long weekend with the situation about Syria still uncertain.

Afternoon trading was volatile, with indexes swinging between break-even levels and solid losses as Secretary of State John Kerry said in televised remarks that Syria’s government used poison gas against civilians and made the case for a limited military response.

“People are uneasy not knowing what’s going on,” said John Carey, portfolio manager at Pioneer Investment Management in Boston. “With that uncertainty and going into the Labor Day holiday, we’re seeing people step back.”

The Dow Jones industrial average was down 30.64 points, or 0.21 percent, at 14,810.31. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index fell 5.20 points, or 0.32 percent, at 1,632.97. The Nasdaq composite index was down 30.44 points, or 0.84 percent, at 3,589.87.

Trading was light ahead of the market holiday on Monday for Labor Day. About 3.99 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, below the daily average so far this year of about 6.31 billion shares.

“I tend to view the weakness as a buying opportunity, barring some global crisis,” said Mr. Carey, who helps oversee about $200 billion in assets. “Syria isn’t the crisis in and of itself, but if we do take military action, there could be repercussions.”

It has been a tough month over all for stocks. The S.& P. 500 fell 3.1 percent in August and lost 1.8 percent for the week in a third decline in the last four weeks.

The Nasdaq fell 1.9 percent for the week while the Dow slid 1.3 percent in its fourth consecutive weekly loss. For the month, the Dow fell 4.4 percent and the Nasdaq lost 1 percent. Only one of the 30 Dow components, Microsoft, ended higher in August.

Almost 70 percent of stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange closed lower on Friday, while 73 percent of Nasdaq-listed shares ended in negative territory.

Video game companies were among the Nasdaq’s biggest decliners on Friday. Electronic Arts fell 3.37 percent, to $26.64, while Activision Blizzard fell 2.57 percent, to $16.32.

The chip maker OmniVision Technologies tumbled 16.08 percent on earnings weakness. It forecast current-quarter adjusted profit largely below expectations as rising competition and a slowdown of smartphone sales in the United States led to an inventory pileup.

Salesforce.com, the best performer in the S.& P. 500, jumped 12.55 percent, to $49.13, after the company raised its fiscal 2014 sales outlook and reported better-than-expected revenue and earnings. The Apache Corporation, the oil and gas producer, climbed 8.95 percent, to $85.68. The company said it was selling a 33 percent stake in its Egypt oil and gas business for $3.1 billion to the state-owned Chinese oil giant Sinopec Group.

The price of the benchmark 10-year Treasury note fell 8/32, to 97 16/32, and its yield rose to 2.79 percent, from 2.76 percent late Thursday.

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Duquesne Law Dean Weighs in on 'Landmark' Health Care Decision

Duquesne School of Law Dean Ken Gormley said Thursday that the U.S. Supreme Court?s ruling upholding President Obama?s health care reform legislation was one of the most important decisions to come from the high court since the days of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, when it was faced with federal legislation aimed at bringing the country out of the Great Depression.

Duquesne Law Dean Weighs in on 'Landmark' Health Care Decision

Duquesne School of Law Dean Ken Gormley said Thursday that the U.S. Supreme Court?s ruling upholding President Obama?s health care reform legislation was one of the most important decisions to come from the high court since the days of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, when it was faced with federal legislation aimed at bringing the country out of the Great Depression.

Manhunt’s Turning Point Came in the Decision to Release Suspects’ Images

By that afternoon, however, the promising leads had collapsed, and officials confronted a risky decision: proceed without the help of the public to avoid tipping off the suspects or publicize images of them and risk driving them deeper into hiding or worse.

F.B.I. officials, who had been debating all week whether to go to the public, were ultimately convinced that they had to release the photographs because the investigation was stalling and bureau analysts had finally developed clear images of the suspects from hours of video footage.

“We were working the videos, and the footage was getting better and better as the week went on, and by Thursday we got a good frontal facial shot,” a senior law enforcement official said. “That tipped it.”

The official added: “With that type of quality photo, there was no doubt about who they were. We had these murderers on the loose, and we couldn’t hold back, and we needed help finding them.”

The decision — which involved Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the F.B.I. — was one of the most crucial turning points in a remarkable crowd-sourcing manhunt for the plotters of a bombing that killed three people and wounded more than 170.

While the decision to publicize the suspects’ identities resulted in the arrest of one of the men, it set in motion a violent string of events that lasted for 26 hours. Over that time, a police officer was killed, one of the suspects died, several officers sustained life-threatening injuries and one of the country’s major cities was shut down.

On Saturday morning, the younger of the two suspects, Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, remained in serious condition at a Boston hospital. His brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died early Friday after a shootout with the police.

The authorities knew that broadly distributing the images — some captured by ubiquitous surveillance cameras and cellphone snapshots and winnowed down using sophisticated facial-recognition software — would accelerate the digital dragnet, but they did not realize the level of chaos it would create.

Intelligence and law enforcement officials said the authorities in Boston weighed the risks of some mayhem against their growing fear that time was slipping away and that heavily armed and increasingly dangerous men, and possibly accomplices, could wage new attacks in the Boston area or beyond.

Federal authorities involved in the case had briefed administration and Congressional officials on their hopes to arrest the suspects early Thursday without revealing their hand. But those plans vanished by that afternoon.

“We thought we had good leads,” the senior law enforcement official said. “We were working on some stuff, and we got to a point where it leveled off, and then there was nothing imminent, so we moved with what we thought would result in identifying them.”

The authorities first developed information about the suspects’ whereabouts late Thursday when one of them was seen in video footage that was being reviewed from a convenience store in Cambridge that had just been robbed.

Shortly after the suspects left the convenience store, the authorities received a report that a police officer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had been ambushed and killed.

And then, for two hours, there was no sign of the suspects.

It was only after the suspects decided not to kill the owner of a sport utility vehicle that had been carjacked and instead threw him out of his car around 1 a.m. — a decision that ultimately undid their plans to elude the authorities — that they re-emerged on the authorities’ radar.

“If he stayed in the car, they could have tried to drive to New Hampshire or something — it would have added some real time to things, which would have been bad and who knows what they would have done,” the law enforcement official said. “They were desperate and acting pretty crazy.”

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The Supreme Court?s recent decision on Arizona?s immigration law, SB 1070, otherwise known as the ?Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act,? has done little to quell the attention and conversation that has been prevalent over the past two years since the law was passed. Critics of the legislation say it encourages racial profiling, while supporters say it is intended to reduce the number of illegal aliens in the state.

The Practical Effect of the Arizona v. United States Decision

The Supreme Court?s recent decision on Arizona?s immigration law, SB 1070, otherwise known as the ?Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act,? has done little to quell the attention and conversation that has been prevalent over the past two years since the law was passed. Critics of the legislation say it encourages racial profiling, while supporters say it is intended to reduce the number of illegal aliens in the state.

The Practical Effect of the Arizona v. United States Decision

The Supreme Court?s recent decision on Arizona?s immigration law, SB 1070, otherwise known as the ?Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act,? has done little to quell the attention and conversation that has been prevalent over the past two years since the law was passed. Critics of the legislation say it encourages racial profiling, while supporters say it is intended to reduce the number of illegal aliens in the state.

Tereshko Resigns as Supervising Judge in Wake of Critical Superior Court Decision

The Philadelphia judge taken to task by the Pennsylvania Superior Court for failing to disclose that his spouse worked for a law firm representing a defendant in a motor vehicle insurance case has resigned as supervising judge of Philadelphia's civil cases.

The Practical Effect of the Arizona v. United States Decision

The Supreme Court?s recent decision on Arizona?s immigration law, SB 1070, otherwise known as the ?Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act,? has done little to quell the attention and conversation that has been prevalent over the past two years since the law was passed. Critics of the legislation say it encourages racial profiling, while supporters say it is intended to reduce the number of illegal aliens in the state.

The Practical Effect of the Arizona v. United States Decision

The Supreme Court?s recent decision on Arizona?s immigration law, SB 1070, otherwise known as the ?Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act,? has done little to quell the attention and conversation that has been prevalent over the past two years since the law was passed. Critics of the legislation say it encourages racial profiling, while supporters say it is intended to reduce the number of illegal aliens in the state.

The Practical Effect of the Arizona v. United States Decision

The Supreme Court?s recent decision on Arizona?s immigration law, SB 1070, otherwise known as the ?Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act,? has done little to quell the attention and conversation that has been prevalent over the past two years since the law was passed. Critics of the legislation say it encourages racial profiling, while supporters say it is intended to reduce the number of illegal aliens in the state.

Tensions High as Pa. Voter ID Decision in Simpson's Hands

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Duquesne Law Dean Weighs in on 'Landmark' Health Care Decision

Duquesne School of Law Dean Ken Gormley said Thursday that the U.S. Supreme Court?s ruling upholding President Obama?s health care reform legislation was one of the most important decisions to come from the high court since the days of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, when it was faced with federal legislation aimed at bringing the country out of the Great Depression.