Stocks lurched, soared and sank like kites in the wind in the quarter that ended Friday, buffeted by Europe's ongoing debt crisis and worries that the U.S. economy will backslide from feeble recovery to full-on recession.

Those macro forces overwhelmed company-specific factors, analysts said, with most stocks rising and falling together to a degree not seen since the depths of the 2008-09 panic.

"You get big swings day to day based on the rumor du jour about what some central bank is doing," said Robert McConnaughey, head of equity for Columbia Management in Boston.

Consider Redmond-based Concur Technologies, whose gyrations during the quarter nicely paralleled those of the market as a whole. Concur sank 10.6 percent on Aug. 8 — more than it lost in the entire month of July; jumped 7.5 percent the next day; and fell nearly 7 percent the day after that. On Aug. 18 it fell an additional 8.2 percent, but gained most of that back three trading days later. Near the end of the month, Concur shares jumped 10.6 percent over the course of two trading days.

None of these moves occurred because Concur's fundamentals were fluctuating from one day to the next — rather, it was investors' attitude toward stocks in general that was changing.

Still, Concur shares were down more than 25 percent for the third quarter. That's a considerably worse performance than the 14.3 percent quarterly drop in the benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 index, which was capped by a 2.5 percent drop Friday, to 1,131.42.

Other major indexes also posted their worst quarters since the panic.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 12.1 percent, including 2.2 percent Friday, to end at 10,913.38. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index was off 14.8 percent, including a 2.6 drop on Friday; it closed the quarter at 2,415.40.

The Seattle Times Index, comprising companies headquartered in Washington, Oregon and Idaho, fared a bit worse than the benchmarks. It declined 15.9 percent over the quarter, mainly because of the concentration of manufacturing and technology firms in the Northwest.

The European Union's struggles to stave off, or at least manage, a sovereign-debt default by Greece, along with continued economic weakness in most developed nations, defined stock markets over the summer.

Part of investors' anxiety, McConnaughey said, stems from worries that a messy Greek default could spill over to other EU countries, threatening the European recovery and possibly the existence of the euro itself.

"In an interlinked world, Europe is significant enough that if it unraveled, the fear is that the U.S. economy is fragile enough that it couldn't handle it," he said.

That alone would be enough to depress stocks — after all, the only thing worse for corporate profits than sputtering economic growth is none at all.

But skittish investors also have been fleeing stocks in favor of perceived "safe havens" such as Treasury debt, which has pushed yields down to record lows and boosted the value of the dollar against other currencies. A month ago, for instance, a euro cost nearly $1.45; on Friday it cost $1.36.

The stronger dollar is good for travelers but bad for U.S. exporters whose products now cost more — one of the factors behind The Seattle Times Index's relative underperformance.

The flight to safety has, however, benefited some stocks. Microsoft, for instance, was among the quarter's best local performers, even though its stock price fell 4.3 percent. One big reason: With its newly announced quarterly dividend of 20 cents per share, Microsoft stock now yields 3.2 percent — more than 30-year Treasury bonds.

"That just seems absurd to me," said Bob Benson, managing director of investment strategy and research at Laird Norton Tyee in Seattle. "If you're pricing in any positive inflation at all over three decades, you're losing money for the sake of the perceived safety of Treasurys."

The extreme volatility also cooled off the market for initial public offerings, which had been fairly strong in the first half of the year.

Several companies either postponed planned offerings or withdrew them entirely; companies going public in the quarter raised just $3.1 billion compared with $12.3 billion in the second quarter and $12.4 billion in the first, according to research by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The only Northwest IPO in the quarter was Seattle-based Zillow, which went public at $20 a share on July 20 — shortly before the IPO window all but snapped shut. Zillow finished the quarter at $27.35 — up nearly 37 percent from its offer price, but down 23.5 percent from its first-day close.

As stocks get cheaper even as corporate profits remain fairly strong, Benson said that eventually investors won't be able to justify passing them up in order to hold low-yielding bonds.

"A safe harbor becomes less and less safe the more ships seek shelter there," he said.

Drew DeSilver: 206-464-3145 or ddesilver@seattletimes.com