Stocks fell on Friday as Facebook made a shaky debut and finished its first day of trading little changed from its IPO price.
Broad market indexes were sharply lower as turned cautious before leaders of the Group of Eight nations met to dicsuss the eurozone debt crisis.
The Dow Jones industrial average was down about 77 points or 0.6 percent shortly before the close. The broad Standard & Poor's 500 dipped below the 1,300 level, seen as a key support point, for the first time since mid-January, before the meeting by the leaders of the world's major industrial economies near Washington.
Leaders will try to confront the continuing crisis in the euro zone, including the increasing likelihood of a Greek departure from the bloc.
The S&P 500, which has dropped about 7 percent so far this month, was on track for a sixth straight day of declines and its worst week since November.
Shares of the social networking giant Facebook got off to a delayed start and then briefly hit a peak of $45 but settled back and were on track to close at about the offering price of $38.
"When Nasdaq started running into some problems early on before Facebook opened - when there was a sense they kept putting it off, putting it off, the market did come under a little bit of pressure because people were getting nervous about it," said Ken Polcari, Managing Director at ICAP Equities in New York. "When the market faded, we are coming now into Friday afternoon, the G8 meeting and there is just some nervousness."
(Reuters contributed to this story.)
