24/7 Wall St.

General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) had another tough week, but then, so did every other stock included in the Dow Jones industrial average. Every one of the 30 stocks posted a loss for the week, and the range of losses was from 2% to over 10%. GE stock lost about 4.5% last week, a smaller loss than 20 other Dow stocks, but not quite good enough to let the company shake its ranking as the worst performing Dow stock for the year to date.

GE shares have lost about 14.4% of their value in 2018 and have fallen almost 50% over the past 12 months. The second-worst Dow stock so far this year is Procter & Gamble Co. (NYSE: PG), down 13%, followed by Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM), down about 9.4%, then Chevron Corp. (NYSE: CVX), down about 9.3%, and American Express Co. (NYSE: AXP), down about 7.6%.

The Dow dropped 1,330 points over the course of the past week, a loss of 5.2%. Market volatility, as measured by the VIX, opened the week at a relatively tame 18.87 and closed the week at 29.75 after jumping to near 50 on Tuesday and to 40 on Friday.

While the company did not drop any more neutron bombs last week, a report at Bloomberg revealed that the company’s pension plan is underfunded by about $31 billion, threatening benefits for some 619,000 employees and former employees. The funding hole could also hamper CEO John Flannery’s plans to sell off nonperforming assets.

The company’s aviation segment got some bad news last week when it discovered a flaw in its new GE9X jet engine destined to power the Boeing 777X. GE said that the “minor” flaw will not affect the first test flight of the engine scheduled for next February.

GE shares dropped to a new 52-week low of $14.23 on Friday and closed at $14.94. The 52-week high is $30.59. The 12-month consensus price target is $19.08, down $1.20 week over week, with the low target at $13 and the high target at $36.