By Caitlin McCabe and Heather Gillers

Stocks erased much of their gains from the week Friday after investors tapped the brakes in response to signs of a lackluster economy.

Bond prices rallied while all three major indexes dipped by more than 1%, undoing record gains earlier in the week by the S&P 500. Indicators published in the morning showed service industry weakness and a 4.9% drop in sales of existing homes last month. A report last week showed retail sales also fell in January.

"The data is just piling up day after day," said Jay Hatfield, chief executive at Infrastructure Capital Advisors.

Flagging health care stocks also weighed down the Dow Jones Industrial Average. UnitedHealth stock dropped more than 7% Friday after The Wall Street Journal reported the Justice Department was probing its Medicare billing practices and how the company records diagnoses.

UnitedHealth's high stock price means it has a sizable effect on the price-weighted Dow. Other healthcare stocks including Humana and CVS Health also sold off.

Shares of Novo Nordisk, the company behind blockbuster obesity drugs Wegovy and Ozempic, rallied after the Food and Drug Administration said shortages in those drugs had been resolved.

And investors gave a cool initial reception to a plan by the president's media company to start an investing fund. Shares in Trump Media and Technology $(DJT)$, the parent company of the president's Truth Social platform, fell 3% after a morning rally.

In global markets, enthusiasm about artificial intelligence is bubbling up again-this time in Asia. Alibaba sparked a fierce rally, a day after the Chinese e-commerce and cloud-computing company reported strong results from its AI strategy and pledged more aggressive investment in this area.

Alibaba stock leapt 15% in Hong Kong, and rallied in early U.S. trading. The Hang Seng Index surged 4% to its highest close in just under three years.

In today's trading:

--The Dow fell 1.69% to close at 43428.0. The S&P 500 fell 1.71% to close at 6013.13, and the Nasdaq Composite fell 2.2% to 19524.0

--Ten-year Treasury yields fell 0.08 to 4.419%.

--Oil prices declined. Brent-crude futures slipped below $74 a barrel, on pace to break a four-session rising streak.

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 21, 2025 16:24 ET (21:24 GMT)

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