The stock market extended this week’s losses after the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, said inflation remains his main concern even amid growing evidence the economy is slowing.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., General Motors Corp., and Boeing Co. pushed the Dow Jones Industrial Average to its third straight decline as crude oil’s jump to a sixmonth high contributed to concerns inflation is accelerating. Financial shares, led by Goldman Sachs Group Inc., were the biggest drag on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. The gauge erased its gain for the year.

Weaker-than-forecast durable goods data added to reports this week that the housing market continues to deteriorate and consumer confidence is waning. In testimony before Congress, Mr. Bernanke said inflation is a “greater risk” than slower growth, spurring concern the Fed may be unwilling to lower interest rates to prop up the economy.

“We’re a little nervous about what’s going on,” a manager of about $1 billion at J&W Seligman & Co. in New York, Michael Alpert, said. “If you make a list of positives and negatives on the economy, the negatives are starting to stack up.”

Benchmark indexes fell to their lows of the day on Mr. Bernanke’s comments, which contained no reference to a possible rate cut. The central bank last week kept its benchmark rate unchanged and dropped its stated tilt toward higher borrowing costs.

“The market is reacting to Bernanke’s comments about inflation and that he may not be in position to bail us out,” the chief investment strategist at Oppenheimer & Co. in New York, which manages about $10 billion, Michael Metz, said. “Now that you’ve got higher energy prices, that doesn’t make the Fed’s job any easier.”