After The Bell: Stocks Tumble On Crude Oil Plunge

(CBS) -- Stocks closed sharply lower Friday, capping off one of their worst weeks for 2015, as plunging oil prices, anticipation over next week's Fed rate decision and soft retail sales weighed on investor sentiment.

The S&P 500 lost 40, the NASDAQ shed 111 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down nearly 310 points, settling to 17,265.

"I think today was really just a convergence of a lot of issues related to growth. Oil, a barometer of global growth, has been dropping, and it looks like there's no bottom in sight, the merger between Dow and DuPont looks like a desperation for growth in an environment where there just isn't much. And finally we had retail sales that fell short of expectations," says Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank.

He adds they are taking a wait-and-see approach on a lot of asset classes right now and want to see some incremental improvement first.