U.S. stocks declined Thursday after a government report showed that the economy grew at its slowest pace in more than two years. The gross domestic product grew at a 3.1-per-cent annualized rate in the first quarter of this year, slower than experts had predicted. "The market's having trouble with the question of how much the economy is going to slow," Scott Wren, senior equity strategist at A.G. Edwards & Sons Inc., told the Bloomberg financial news agency. "The concern is that economic growth is going to collapse." The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 128.43 points, or 1.26 per cent, to 10,070.37. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 Index lost 13.16 points, or 1.14 per cent, to close at 1,143.22, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index fell 26.25 points, or 1.36 per cent, to 1,904.18. On currency markets, the dollar gained against the euro, rising to 77.561 euro cents, from 77.325 euro cents on Wednesday. The U.S. currency also increased against the Japanese yen to 106.06 yen from 105.87 yen Wednesday. After falling below 50 dollars per barrel in New York in intraday trading, crude oil for June delivery closed up 16 cents, or 0.3 per cent, at 51.77 dollars. Gold fell 1.85 dollars to 432.50 dollars per fine ounce. ---SP 2358 Local Time 2058 GMT
