Wall Street finished the day sharply lower with the Dow Jones Industrial average down 225 points at 15,112.19. the biggest loss in nearly two months. The blue-chip index has now posted losses in 10 of the last 14 trading days.

The S&P 500 and NASDAQ also had a rough day. The S&P was down close to 1.5 percent. The NASDAQ fell nearly 1.75 percent.

Analysts say the market struggled today because of disappointing news from Dow components Wal-Mart and Cisco, a mixed set of readings on the health of the economy and growing concerns that the second half of the year may not be as strong as investors have been expecting.

Another factor traders say contributed to slide: exceptionally light volume on Wall Street. One veteran market watcher said there were not enough adults trading today to change the market's mood once things went south at the open.

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Market watcher Nicholas Colas of ConvergEx believes that much of today's bad mood on Wall Street is because of Wal-Mart, which announced a decline in sales, saying, "It is such a large company that investors take it as an economic indicator about the consumer." He believes stocks could fall another 5 percent before this slide ends, but cautions it's hard to draw too many lesson from a light-volume trading day in August.

It's worth noting that the Dow is on track to have its biggest weekly drop in nearly four months.