By Caroline Valetkevitch
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Weak German economic data and some earnings disappointments pressured world stock markets on Friday and left the euro at an eight-month low against the U.S. dollar.
Stronger-than-expected U.S. durable goods data also helped the dollar.
U.S. stocks were lower in early trading, hurt by results from Amazon.com AMZN.O and Visa V.N, the two biggest drags on the S&P 500. Amazon dropped 11.1 percent to $318.79, while Visa was down 4.9 percent at $211.90.
"Earnings have been the driving force of this market all week. We had a series of good reports but Amazon in particular was a disappointment and has led to some profit-taking," said Rick Meckler, president of LibertyView Capital Management in Jersey City, New Jersey.
Signs emerged that tensions between the West and Russia are starting to hurt confidence in Europe's dominant economy. Germany's Ifo survey revealed a hefty fall in business confidence over the last few weeks, prompting concerns the region's growth engine and driver of its recovery could be stuttering.
It was the third consecutive fall in an index which monitors the mood of thousands of German firms.
MSCI's All-World Index .MIWD00000PUS was down 0.5 percent and European stocks .FTEU3 down 0.8 percent.
The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI fell 154.06 points or 0.9 percent, to 16,929.74, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 12.36 points or 0.62 percent, to 1,975.62 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped 38.35 points or 0.86 percent, to 4,433.76.
The euro hit an eight-month low against the dollar of $1.3427 EUR= after U.S. durable goods orders data, which followed more positive U.S. jobless data Thursday.
The euro also fell on ongoing tensions between Russia and Ukraine. European officials are to continue talks over plans to squeeze Russia with further sanctions following the downing of a Malaysia Airlines that killed almost 300 people.
Dollar-traded Russian stocks .IRTS fell 1.6 percent to bring losses over two weeks to roughly 12 percent. Russian bonds also fell as the country's central bank unexpectedly raised interest rates.
U.S. Treasuries prices jumped, with fixed-income traders disappointed by soft spots in the U.S. durable goods report. Ten-year Treasuries US10YT=RR were up 8/32 in price to yield 2.478 percent.
Despite the heftier-than-forecast 0.7 percent overall rise in orders for long-lasting U.S. manufactured items in June, some focused on weakness in airlines and other sectors that shook optimism about U.S. economic growth.
Gold XAU= edged up after dropping to a one-month low overnight, but was headed for a second straight week of losses.
U.S. crude CLc1 was near flat at $102.07 a barrel, while Brent LCOc1 was up 65 cents at $107.72.
(Additional reporting by Rodrigo Campos and Michael Connor in New York, Marc Jones in London, Lisa Twaronite in Tokyo, editing by John Stonestreet; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
