Surprise - stocks fall despite employment report

The Dow dropped 139 points - roughly what it gained on Thursday and another sign that investors remain conflicted on the short-term direction of the economy. But what about October's solid jobs report? Well, Wall Street apparently was focusing less on what it already knew - that the economy is growing at a modest clip - and more on the uncertainty of what Washington will do about taxes and the deficit, otherwise known as the fiscal cliff. Just another example of why you don't want to predict how the market will react to a single news event. At the close, the Dow was at 13,093, up 7.2 percent on the year. That's still fine, all things considered, though the numbers had been falling for much of October.