NEW YORK – The stock market took a late afternoon fall after European Union finance ministers failed to come up with the full amount of money pledged for a bailout fund.

Banks led the way down. Morgan Stanley dropped 5.5 percent and Bank of America Corp. sank 4 percent, the biggest fall in the Dow Jones industrial average.

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Mario Draghi, president of European Central Bank, said Monday that the central bank was looking for ways to keep the eurozone bailout fund working even if France loses its AAA rating. The Associated Press

The worry looming over bank stocks is that if Europe’s debt crisis spins out of control, European banks would fail and damage U.S. banks. Big banks in Europe and the U.S. are linked through the web of global financial markets.

“If Europe is going to be bring us down, it’s going to come through the financial firms,” said J.J. Kinahan, chief derivatives strategist at TD Ameritrade.

The Dow lost 100.13 points, or 0.8 percent to close at 11,766.26. The average lost 55 points in the last hour of trading as reports emerged that the EU finance ministers couldn’t drum up the full $261 billion in new money to the International Monetary Fund. European leaders had pledged the money for a special IMF fund for struggling European countries at a summit meeting less than two weeks ago.

Cautious comments from the head of the European Central Bank also helped push stocks lower. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 14.31 points, or 1.2 percent, to 1,205.35. The Nasdaq composite index fell 32.19 points, or 1.3 percent, to 2,523.14.

Mario Draghi, the ECB president, said Monday that the central bank was looking for ways to keep the eurozone’s bailout fund working even if credit rating agencies strip France of its AAA grade. The bailout fund depends on the top ratings of France, Germany and the countries that contribute to it.

Draghi also restated his view that large-scale government bond purchases were outside the central bank’s responsibility.

In the United States, a gauge of sentiment among builders inched up to its highest level since May 2010.

The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo builder sentiment index added two points to 21 in December. Any reading below 50 still reflects a negative outlook.

New homes make up a small portion of housing sales. But they have an outsize impact on the economy. The builder trade group says each new home built creates an average of three jobs for a year and generates about $90,000 in taxes.

The outlook rose four points in the South and one point in the West. In the Midwest, it was unchanged, and in the Northeast, sentiment fell one point.

Among companies making large moves Monday:

• Winn-Dixie soared 70 percent. The supermarket chain is being sold to Bi-Lo LLC, another supermarket operator with stores in the southern United States, in a deal valued at $560 million.

• Cablevision Systems Corp. rose 2 percent after an analyst from Citibank said a recent drop in the company’s stock seemed “way overdone.” The stock has lost 27 percent from the end of October through last Friday, following the unexpected resignation of its chief operating officer.

• Bank of America ended the day at $4.99, putting it at risk of further selling pressure because many mutual funds have rules against holding stocks that trade below the $5 mark.

• Commercial Metals Co. dropped 1.4 percent. The company’s board rejected a $1.7 billion takeover bid from investor Carl Icahn, saying the proposed deal undervalued the company.

The three major stock market indexes lost more than 2 percent last week amid worries that some European governments would try to drop the euro. Fitch Ratings warned Friday that it may cut the credit grades for Italy, Spain and four other countries that use the currency.

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