Dow off about 140 as U.K. gets 'negative' outlook

Stocks ended lower Friday as investors digested a double dose of bad European news -- the U.K. getting slapped with a "negative" outlook and Greece's stalled bailout talks.

How major benchmarks fared:

■ Dow: Down 0.8%, a loss of 140 points, to 17,898.84
■ S&P 500: Down 0.7% to 2094.11
■ Nasdaq composite: 0.6% to 5051.10

Twitter bucked the downward trend a day after the closing-bell bombshell that CEO Dick Costolo is leaving the post. TWTR ticked up 0.2% as the medium it created buzzed about rapper Snoop Dogg's Twitter campaign to succeed him.

Standard & Poor's says Britain's "economic policymaking could be at risk of being more exposed to party politics than we had previously anticipated." It's "similar to the situation in the U.S. in 2011," the agency said in a release, when S&P lowered that country's rating.

The S&P move was prompted, it says, by Britain's decision to hold a referendum on whether to join the European Union.

Greece's ASE index cratered 5.9% on news that the IMF had left talks in Brussels because a lack of progress. That came just a day after the ASE got an 8% rocket boost in the other direction -- when good feelings predominated over debt discussions.

Heading into the weekend, Greece says it is preparing for more talks. The country faces a June 30 deadline for a debt payment and a meeting of eurozone finance ministers on June 18-19 may provide the last opportunity for it to reach a compromise with the European Union and International Monetary Fund.

Consumer confidence increased more than economists surveyed by Bloomberg had forecast, with Americans the most upbeat about their wage prospects in seven years.

in June as Americans were the most upbeat about their wage prospects in seven years. The University of Michigan preliminary consumer sentiment index for June increased to 94.6 from 90.7 in May, Bloomberg reported.

European shares moved lower, the CAC 40 in France taking a 1.4% hit, Germany's DAX sliding 1.2% and the FTSE of Britain losing 0.9%.

Benchmarks in Asia climbed for the day. Japan's Nikkei 225 added 0.1%. Hong Kong's Hang Seng shot up 1.4%.

U.S. stocks rose a bit Thursday, building on the previous session's big rally.

Contributing: Kim Hjelmgaard.