1st LD Writethru: U.S. stocks keep falling as oil weakness weighs

U.S. stocks tumbled for the second straight session Friday, as falling oil prices weighed on Wall Street sentiment.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 367.39 points, or 2.10 percent, to 17,128.45. The S&P 500 slumped 36.37 points, or 1.78 percent, to 2,005.52. The Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 79.47 points, or 1.59 percent, to 4,923.08.

Oil prices, which were trading around their lowest level in nearly seven years recent days, continued to fall Friday as data signaled that U.S. crude output is not contracting.

"For the time being, the most decisive move has been in commodities, where a tightening Fed is pretty clearly bad news no matter what follows from it," said Chris Low, chief economist at FTN Financial, in a note.

On the economic front, the Markit's flash U.S. services PMI Business Activity Index registered 53.7 in December, missing market consensus and logging the lowest reading for 12 months.

Adding more pessimism to the market, overseas stock markets witnessed broadly-based decline Friday.

In Asia, Japan's equities ended sharply lower as volatile sentiment dominated the market after the Bank of Japan decided on new steps to support its monetary easing policy, with the 225-issue Nikkei Stock Average dropping 1.90 percent.

European shares also decreased broadly as investors remained cautious on weak commodity prices, with Britain's benchmark FTSE 100 Index going down 0.82 percent.

Meanwhile, investors were still sifting through the Federal Reserve's decision to raise interest rate for the first time in nearly a decade.

Analysts believed the stock markets would witness some volatility in recent days as Wall Street tried to digest the rate hike decision.

For the week, the blue-chip Dow fell 0.8 percent, and the broader S&P 500 dipped 0.3 percent, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq was down 0.2 percent. Endit