Stock Market Ends July in Dive, but Analysts Are Upbeat --- The stock market ended July with the sharpest decline in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index since April, while the Dow Jones industrial index fell more than 300 points, enough to eliminate all of its gains for the year. --- The reasons for the losses on Thursday were not entirely clear. Disappointing earnings reports by a few major companies, Argentina’s apparent default on its debt and fears about the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East may all have been part of it. And relatively strong economic reports in the United States this week may have caused concern among traders that the Federal Reserve might tighten its expansive monetary policy. -- But whatever the causes of the decline, it wasn’t entirely unexpected, and the reaction of several strategists was fairly upbeat. -- Several assessed it this way: The market fell by 2 percent in one day? It’s about time. -- “I think it’s healthy and normal at this stage of the monetary cycle,” said Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab. “After the run-up in the market we’ve had until now, I’d expect that we’d have a real correction. Whether this is the beginning of one, I don’t know, but I think it would be very healthy to have one. And a decline like this one? It’s O.K. to have it.” --- By themselves, the major market measures looked ugly, however. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 317.06 points, or 1.88 percent, to close at 16,563.30, which put it into negative territory for 2014. The Nasdaq composite index lost 93.13 points, or 2.09 percent, to 4,369.77; that technology-laden index remained up 4.63 percent for the year. And the S.&.P. 500 fell 39.40 points, or 2 percent, to 1,930.67; even with that loss, the S.&.P. 500, a barometer of the broad large-capitalization stock market, remained up 4.45 percent for the year. -- More, http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/07/31/markets-end-july-in-dive-but-analysts-are-upbeat/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0