Wall Street Stocks Plunge, Near First Monthly Decline Since August

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market is opening sharply lower as investors fret over disappointing earnings and more trouble in overseas markets.

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 226 points, or 1.4 percent, to 15,625 moments after the market opened Friday. The Standard & Poor's 500 index lost 22 points, or 1.2 percent, to 1,772. The Nasdaq dropped 43 points, or 1.1 percent, to 4,079.

This is the second big dive the Dow Jones has taken this week. Here's a 5-day look at how it has faired, thanks to Google Finance:

Disappointing results and outlooks from retailers left investors uneasy. Amazon fell 8 percent after it reported earnings that fell short of expectations. Wal-Mart cut its outlook.

Currencies for several countries fell against the dollar as turmoil in emerging markets flared up once again.

It's been a tough January for investors. The Dow is down 5 percent, while the S&P 500 index has lost 4 percent.

But as the Brookings Institute's Justin Wolfers noted earlier this week, the stock market as a whole is doing just fine in the long-term. You just need to think in terms of years, not hour and minutes: