Wall Street pulled back for the first time in five days yesterday as investors worried about balance sheets at banks and the quarterly results that businesses will start releasing this week.

The Dow Jones industrials fell 41.74, or 0.5 percent, to 7,975.85 after being down as much as 155 points.

Investors were also disappointed that talks for IBM Corp.'s $7 billion deal to buy Sun Microsystems Inc. have stalled — a sign that the market is still not ready to support big mergers.