NEW YORK (AP)—Wall Street has lost some of the enthusiasm that powered its late 2008 rally. The Dow Jones industrials have taken the biggest hit, falling for five straight days as investors questioned whether they got ahead of themselves when they bet in December that the economy and corporate profits were about to recover.

With companies issuing warnings about their revenue and profit over the past week, the safe play on Wall Street has become to throw out analysts’ already lowered expectations and expect results will fall well short.

Investors are worried that economy is punishing even conglomerates like General Electric Co., which has an array of businesses to offset weakness in one area. An analyst warned Tuesday that GE could disappoint investors when it releases results next week.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index has given up 3.5 percent this year as investors shift into wait-and-see mode over the health of companies’ results. Questions about earnings — in particular companies’ expectations for business this year — are likely to dominate trading in the coming weeks. The market will get an earlier-than-expected reading on the financial sector when JPMorgan Chase & Co. reports earnings on Thursday — nearly a week ahead of schedule. Investors are fearful of seeing another year of multibillion dollar losses from financial companies, as analysts forecast mounting problems in credit card and commercial real estate portfolios.

Bank of America Corp. tumbled Tuesday after a Sandler O’Neill & Partners analyst became the latest to revise his expectations for the company’s fourth-quarter results and predicted a loss. The stock fell 6.8 percent.

Meanwhile, Citigroup Inc. and Morgan Stanley announced a deal after the closing bell Tuesday to combine their brokerage operations as Citi struggles to raise additional cash.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Tuesday the stimulus package being crafted by President-elect Barack Obama and Congress could provide a “significant boost” to the sinking economy. During a speech in London, he also said “more capital injections and guarantees may become necessary” to stabilize financial markets and spur more lending. Obama is pushing for an economic stimulus that includes big tax cuts and has an estimated price tag of about $800 billion.