Even another drop in crude oil prices wasn’t sufficient to help Wall Street overcome news of languid August retail sales and higher unemployment claims. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 344.65 points, or 3 percent, to end Thursday’s bearish session at 11,188.23, and retail stocks helped lead the market downward, with the Standard & Poor’s Retail Index relinquishing 3.1 percent of its value to end at 401.44. Among the firms escaping the southerly drift

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were Collective Brands, which advanced 11.6 percent on the strength of a better-than-expected second quarter, and American Apparel, which bucked the dismal sales trends of August with a 31 percent...