"The rapid rise in interest rates since late March is turning off some people who have invested in stocks. They are selling shares and hoarding cash, with a few already hunting for bargains in the bond market.</br></br>The move away from stocks accelerated Friday as the Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 52.97 to 2272.52. It was the fourth-largest point decline in the history of the industrial average.</br></br>""There were a lot of reasons not to buy stocks,"" said Peter Furniss, a managing director with Smith Barney, Harris Upham & Co. in New York. Traders said they saw few buyers for stocks Friday. On the New York Stock Exchange, 1,378 stocks lost ground while just 291 advanced.</br></br>The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index sank 6.81 to 287.43 and the Big Board's composite index dropped 3.51 to 162.25.</br></br>For stock investors, a litany of negative news Friday fanned fears of surging inflation and much higher interest rates. Producer prices jumped an unexpectedly sharp 0.7% in April and major banks raised their prime lending rates to 8 1/4% from 8%. It was the third increase in the prime rate in seven weeks, with the previous one just two weeks earlier."