NEW YORK — Investors fixated on the faltering economy brushed off the type of merger news that normally starts rallies.

Wall Street fell yesterday as uneasiness about the economy eclipsed a bounce in troubled financial stocks and news of a big drug company merger. Stocks rose in the early going but turned lower in a now familiar pattern where short-lived bursts of optimism give way to concerns about the country's economy.

Investors even wrote off rare dealmaking as moves borne more of necessity than opportunity as drugmakers Merck & Co. and Schering-Plough announced plans to combine in a $41 billion deal.

"Any type of news we get, the market is just skeptical," said Jon Biele, head of capital markets at Cowen & Co. "There is nothing in the near term that is going to ratchet us to a different higher level."