Tag: stock market

The stock market took yet another nosedive on Monday triggering the New York Stock Exchange’s ‘circuit breaker’ stopping stock from plummeting even further. It was the 3rd time in two weeks the automated system kicked in to give stock traders a chance to catch their breath. The dramatic drop came after the Federal Reserve announced on Sunday it would slash interest rates to nearly zero, a move not taken since the crash of 2008. From the Washington Post:

It was the third time in two weeks the New York Stock Exchange triggered the so-called circuit breaker, a rarely used lever, to stop stocks from free-fall and give traders time to get their bearings. It’s activated when the S&P 500 falls 7 percent; on Monday the index skidded more than 8.1 percent before trading stopped for 15 minutes.

There was some recovery in the Dow by early afternoon, with the blue-chip index paring its losses to 1,935 points, or 8.4 percent. But by mid-afternoon all gains were gone. Shortly before 2:30, the Dow was down more than 2,350 points, or 10.1 percent. The S&P 500 and tech-heavy sank 9.6 percent and the Nasdaq declined 9.8 percent.

The Dow erased most of the nearly 2,000-point jolt it got Friday after President Trump issued an emergency declaration over the coronavirus pandemic, which has disrupted nearly every aspect of American life and threatens to catapult the United States into recession.

Stock markets around the world dropped for the sixth day in a row due to escalating fears that the coronavirus outbreak will affect economies across the globe. From the New York Times:

The S&P 500 fell 4.4 percent on Thursday, the worst single-day market slide for the market since August 2011. The index is on pace for its worst weekly performance since the 2008 financial crisis. Stocks in Europe and Asia were also hard hit on Thursday.

The sell-off came after public health officials in the United States and Germany said new patients in each country had no known connection to others with the illness, a development that could complicate efforts to track the virus. Cases of the virus have appeared in at least 47 countries.

The speed of the market slump has been stunning, with the S&P 500 falling more than 10 percent from its Feb. 19 high, a drop that Wall Street labels a correction to suggest the decline is more significant than a few days of downbeat trading.

The CDC has confirmed the first U.S. coronavirus case of ‘unknown origin.’ Donald Trump continues to deny the severity of the coronavirus threat.