The bears are back.

Since the Jan. 19 market close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has lost more than 750 points, nearly 7% of its value. The selloff culminated Thursday in a 268-point drop, which brought the index to its lowest point since Nov. 4. Now, the index stands below 10,000, a key psychological benchmark.

Of course, the Dow is just one measure of the market, and its 30 components are more representative of blue chips. However, over the same period, the broader S&P 500 index has plummeted more than 7.6% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite has dropped more than 8.4%.

What s going on here? Many market watchers had been expecting a pullback since the better part of last year, but to many, this recent market turn feels like a surprise. In mid-January, everything seemed to be going OK.

I think the magnitude isn t necessarily a huge surprise, says Richard Sparks, senior equities analyst at Schaeffer's Investment Research. I m surprised by the quickness, he says.

Then again, it s been a busy a stretch. Since the market began heading south, traders have seen a public scolding of the financial system, heard threats of new regulation and watched the employment situation grow arguably worse.

Here s a look at five key factors that weighed on traders during the latest pullback.

Heading into mid-January, the job market seemed to be have turned a corner, but weekly jobless claims released on Jan. 14, Jan. 21 and Jan. 28 were all greater than expected and progressively higher. On Thursday, the government reported weekly claims rose 8,000 last week to 480,000 and economists had predicted a 15,000-claim decline. Investors brushed it off the first time, but worries have mounted. Starting on Jan. 21, on the days the weekly figures were reported, the Dow fell 213, 116, and 268, respectively.

The slide continued Friday morning after a mixed January jobs report. The Labor Department said the unemployment rate fell last month to 9.7%, down from 10.0% in December, but that the economy lost 20,000 jobs, even as economists were expecting job growth.

President Obama s renewed call last month for limits on the size of Wall Street s biggest banks left the financial sector shaking. "We have to get this done," Obama said at the White House on Jan. 21. "If these folks want a fight, it's a fight I'm ready to have." Traders were listening, and the Dow plummeted 213 points that day. Components American Express (AXP), Bank of America (BAC) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM) each lost ground.

Traders frowned on the extended tenure of Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, whose policies have been the subject of much criticism and debate. Bernanke was reappointed by the Senate on Jan. 28 by a vote of 70 to 30. The Dow fell 116 points during the session ahead of the after-market vote and another 53 points the following day.

The December reports on housing starts and new home sales came in weaker than expected, calling into question the pace of recovery in the housing market. The reports were released on Jan. 20 and Jan. 27, respectively, and the Dow saw triple-digit losses on both days. "We ve gotten kind of a spate of soft economic data for December reported in January that looked to begin to fade into the end of the year," says Bill Stone, chief investment strategist at PNC Wealth Management. "The GDP seemed to cheer us up for a little bit, but [other data] was a little softer than the market would have liked."

The most recent drop in the Dow came after troubling reports from Old World economies. The European Commission said Wednesday that it plans to strictly monitor Greece s plans to trim its deficit and scolded Athens for misreporting data. Separately, Spain lifted its projections for its own annual budget deficits through 2012. And Portugal said it received a disappointing response at a Treasury bill auction. On Thursday, U.S. traders awoke to the news and immediately sent the Dow downward. By the end of the day, the index had lost 268 points.