Stocks sink after Republicans cancel budget vote

NEW YORK — Investors sent Washington a reminder Friday that Wall Street is a power player in talks to avoid the “fiscal cliff.”

Stocks fell sharply after House Republicans called off a vote on tax rates and left federal budget talks in disarray 10 days before sweeping tax increases and government spending cuts take effect.

The Dow Jones industrial average lost 120.88 points to close at 13,190.84, a decline of 0.9 percent. Other indexes posted comparable losses. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 13.54 points to 1,430.15. The Nasdaq composite index declined 29.38 to 3,021.01.

The House bill would have raised taxes on Americans making at least $1 million per year and locked in decade-old tax cuts for Americans making less. Taxes will rise for almost all Americans on Jan. 1 unless Congress acts.

House Speaker John Boehner had presented what he called “Plan B” while he negotiated with the White House on avoiding the sweeping tax increases and spending cuts, a combination known as the “fiscal cliff.”

But Boehner scrapped a vote on the bill Thursday night after it became clear it did not have enough support in the Republican-led House to secure passage. He called on the White House and the Democratic-led Senate to work something out.

The market’s decline demonstrated that investors’ nerves are raw as they await a resolution.

“Where we are today, the market would be satisfied with the announcement of a stopgap measure,” said Quincy Krosby, a market strategist at Prudential Financial. “The more the clock ticks, the more the market is saying, ‘Just give us something.’”

Other markets registered their concern, but the reaction was not extreme. The yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note fell 0.04 percentage point to 1.76 percent.

The price of gold, which some investors buy when fear overtakes the market, climbed, but only by 0.9 percent. Gold rose $14.20 to $1,660.10 an ounce.