“In short, horrible,” Ian Shepherdson of High Frequency Economics said of the report. “But only to be expected in the wake of the equity plunge and the subsequent collapse in confidence. We don’t expect the headline to drop much more.”  All 30 stocks in the Dow declined, with financial shares faring worst. Shares of Bank of America, Citigroup and Merrill Lynch all fell more than 11 percent. The big insurers Ambac and MBIA posted deep losses for last quarter and their shares lost 41 percent and 22 percent, respectively.  “I think anytime you do see a rally like we’ve been having, there will always be a little bit of pullback when people wake up and see things like today’s headline number on nonmanufacturing activity, which was the lowest of all time,” Michael Feroli, an economist at JPMorgan Chase, said. “If there’s data out, there’s going to be bad news out. That will tend to keep market enthusiasm a little bit contained.”  Earnings also disappointed at several major businesses, offering a bleak assessments of the current economy. GMAC, the finance company partly owned by General Motors, said that it lost $2.52 billion in the third quarter and that its mortgage unit, ResCap, was struggling to survive. Time Warner, the media and entertainment juggernaut, reported a higher-than-expected profit for the third quarter but lowered its outlook; its stock dropped 6.3 percent.  Crude oil prices dropped $5.23 a barrel to settle at $65.30.  The Treasury’s benchmark 10-year note rose 6/32, to 102 13/32. The yield, which moves in the opposite direction from the price, was at 3.70 percent, down from 3.72 percent late Tuesday.  Wall Street will now turn to Friday’s employment report from the Labor Department, which economists expect will show that 200,000 jobs were lost last month. A separate report released on Wednesday by Automatic Data Processing, a private group, showed that private companies cut an estimated 157,000 jobs in October, the most in almost six years.  The A.D.P. report is considered volatile by economists and has been a poor predictor of this year’s employment figures from the government. Still, investors can refer to it as a gauge for Friday’s more important data, and the news was not good. Layoffs spread from automakers, financial and housing-related companies to retailers and other services as the downturn deepened.  For investors seeking a silver lining, Wednesday’s market downturn seemed to indicate that Wall Street was once again reacting in predictable ways to negative news. For weeks, traders were in crisis mode, obsessing about arcane credit gauges like Ted spreads and credit-default swaps, and wondering about the outcome of the election. On the top of the wish list for investors was a return to stability.  “The market is starting to focus on normal things, like company fundamentals, earnings, macroeconomic data, employment, even market technicals like trend lines,” said Steve Sachs, director of trading at Rydex Investments. “After four or five weeks where none of that mattered, this is the first week we are thinking about that. Markets are moving in a more orderly way.”  For those curious about the connection between stock markets and presidential elections, Wednesday’s declines fit in with historical precedent. Since 1888, on average, stocks fell 0.5 percent from Monday to Wednesday of a presidential election week when the Democrats took the White House, according to Jeremy J. Siegel, a professor at the Wharton School. (A Republican victory brought an average return of 0.7 percent.) This week, stocks fell about 1.5 percent over the same period.  Over the full four-year term, stocks have historically fared better under Democratic administrations.  Stocks in Frankfurt, London and Paris all fell about 2 percent.  Following are the results of Wednesday’s Treasury auction of 77-day cash management bills:  A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B7 of the New York edition with the headline: Stocks Fall as Service Industries Weaken. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
Hopes for a post-election Wall Street bounce were dashed as investors took profits and dealt with another round of bleak economic news.