After a modestly successful six months, Wall Street ended the first half of the year yesterday with a thud as investors feared that the economy's rebound won't be as robust as hoped.

Stocks fell sharply yesterday after a private research group said consumer confidence unexpectedly fell in June, and the latest data on the troubled housing sector provided no help to the market.

As the second quarter ended, the question weighing on the market is whether signs of an economic recovery will be evident by the end of the year. Analysts say it could be difficult for the market to resume its advance until investors get data that confirm things are actually getting better - not just that the economy has stopped getting worse.

"The market is concerned that this budding recovery is going to evaporate - was just a mirage," said Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at California State University, Channel Islands.

A focus in coming weeks will be second-quarter earnings reports, and, more importantly, what companies have to say about prospects for business in the rest of 2009.

The Dow fell 82.38 yesterday to 8,447.00; the S&P 500 fell 7.91 to 919.32, and the Nasdaq slid 9.02 to 1,835.04.

Investors have gone through a psychological shift over the past six months. After sending the Dow plunging to a 12-year low in early March amid fears of another Great Depression, they drove it up a staggering 34 percent from mid-March to mid-June as the global economy and corporate world showed signs of stabilizing.

It was the shortest time frame for a market recovery of that size since the 1930s.

"That massive fear of a complete failure in the financial system? That's been taken off the table," said Brett D'Arcy, chief investment officer of CBIZ Wealth Management. "The doomsday predictions? Those have been largely pushed aside."

For the January through June period, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq finished up, while the Dow industrials and the Inquirer/Bloomberg Philadelphia index ended down slightly. All marked a big improvement from the last half of 2008.

But investors are aware that U.S. businesses may still be facing hard times.

First, there's the issue of how they're making money. Companies largely cost-cut their way into profitability in the 2009 first quarter. That method might not fly with investors seeking signs of real growth in the rest of the year - when the economic recovery is supposed to arrive.

Second, investors want to hear executives' take on the economy. Outlooks are important in any business environment because companies offer more detailed views into economic indicators such as orders, inventories, and consumer trends.

Even if the forecasts are disappointing, analysts believe stocks are on a more solid footing than they were earlier this year. The market is no longer being driven by panic.

Still, stocks have paused and wobbled because the economic data that fired up their rally in early March haven't improved much lately.

"The world isn't ending," said Keith Wirtz, president and chief investment officer at Fifth Third Asset Management in Cincinnati. But now, he said, "all eyes and all thoughts are on the recovery side: How big will the recovery be? How strong?"

About four stocks fell yesterday for every three that rose on the New York Stock Exchange, where volume came to 1.3 billion shares, compared with 1.1 billion traded Monday.