NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Wednesday's steep selloff -- the market's third straight losing session -- pushed the Dow industrials into the red for the year, confirming that the rally in stocks is tapped out, at least for now.

The Nasdaq composite had already erased all of its gains for the year by the end of Tuesday's session.

The Dow Jones industrial average (down 160.07 to 10296.89, Charts), the Standard & Poor's 500 (down 16.69 to 1123.89, Charts) index and the Nasdaq composite (down 31.01 to 1964.15, Charts) all sank around 1.5 percent Wednesday.

That left only the S&P 500 clinging to modest gains so far for 2004.

The big drop comes, ironically, as the bull market is about to celebrate its first birthday. It was a year ago -- on March 12, 2003 -- that the market hit bottom and started a powerful rally that helped snapped a three-year losing streak for stocks.

But since the tech-led rally stalled at the end of January, stocks have been struggling.

"This is not unlike the five percent to 10 percent correction a lot of people were calling for in the beginning of the year," said Art Hogan, chief market analyst at Jefferies & Co., of the market's recent declines. "You have an absence of corporate and economic news and clearly people are trying to rationalize valuations."

Stocks sank in a broad selloff Monday and Tuesday that many analysts saw as a delayed reaction to Friday's report of anemic job growth in February -- numbers that disappointed Wall Street for the fourth month in a row.

The economic news this week hasn't been much better, with signs growing that consumer and CEO confidence are eroding.

While investors were content to shrug off weak job growth last month and earlier in March, choosing to move funds from techs into safer, high-quality blue chips, this week that's changed.

Now more investors are pulling money from stocks and moving into Treasury bonds -- where the sharp rise in prices since Friday has pushed the yield on the 10-year note to its lowest in eight months. (For more on Treasury markets, click here).

Meanwhile, stocks are likely to struggle, at least for a while, veteran market watchers said.

"I think we'll close the year in positive territory," said John Davidson, president and CEO, PartnersRe Asset Management. "But in the next few weeks you're going to see the market in a continued struggle back and forth with people trying to determine whether we have a full economic recovery, even with the labor market struggling."

Before trading begins Thursday, investors will get the weekly jobless claims report. The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment probably edged lower to 343,000 last week from 345,000 the previous week, according to economists surveyed by Briefing.com.

Also due before the open: retail sales for February, with forecasts for a 0.6 percent rise, after a 0.3 percent drop in January.

Retailers Claire's Stores (CLE: Research, Estimates) and Urban Outfitters (URBN: Research, Estimates) are due to report results. And EchoStar (DISH: Research, Estimates), in the news due to its dispute with Viacom (VIA.B: down $1.15 to $37.75, Research, Estimates), is also expected to release earnings early Thursday.

But the session's most closely watched report will be business software maker Oracle (ORCL: up $0.10 to $12.41, Research, Estimates), due after the close.

Oracle, fighting opposition from the government to its bid to buy rival PeopleSoft, is expected to have earned 12 cents a share, according to First Call estimates, up from a penny a year earlier.

Of greater interest to investors will be what the company has to say about demand for software.

Of the 30 stocks in the Dow industrials, 28 fell in Wednesday's action, including some of the safe-haven issues that had benefited from the tech weakness in recent months.

Among the biggest decliners, Alcoa (AA: down $1.45 to $34.20, Research, Estimates) sank 4.1 percent, Caterpillar (CAT: down $2.89 to $73.51, Research, Estimates) lost 3.8 percent and DuPont (DD: down $1.43 to $41.95, Research, Estimates) lost 3.3 percent.

YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS The Procter & Gamble Company Consumer Goods Commodities or Create your own Manage alerts | What is this?

Defense stocks weakened as well including Honeywell (HON: down $1.00 to $32.96, Research, Estimates), which fell 2.9 percent.

The two Dow stocks that rose were Procter & Gamble and Altria.

Procter & Gamble (PG: up $3.04 to $105.53, Research, Estimates) rose about 3 percent after the nation's biggest consumer products maker raised its outlook for profits, boosted its dividend and set a 2-for-1 stock split. The announcement came after Tuesday's close.

Altria (MO: Research, Estimates) edged higher.

Not helping much was a government report showing the nation's trade deficit widened to a record $43.1 billion in January from $42.7 billion in December. Economists were expecting the trade gap would shrink.

Market breadth was negative. On the New York Stock Exchange, decliners beat advancers by nearly 3-1 as some 1.64 billion shares traded. On the Nasdaq, losers beat winners by better than a 3-1 margin on volume of 2.13 billion shares.

Treasury prices edged lower, with the 10-year note falling 3/32 of a point in price, pushing its yield up to 3.72 percent from 3.71 percent late Tuesday. Treasury prices and yields move in opposite directions.

In currency trading, the dollar edged lower versus the yen, but gained versus the euro and other major currencies.

In commodities markets, NYMEX light sweet crude oil futures fell 18 cents to settle at $36.10 a barrel. COMEX gold fell $4.20 to settle at $400.30 an ounce.