Dow Sheds 450 Points As US Stock Sell-Off Deepens

Wall Street stocks fell sharply for a second straight session Monday with the Dow losing about 450 points amid worries over rising US interest rates.

Near 1840 GMT, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had lost 1.7 percent to 25,090.48.

The broad-based S&P 500 fell 1.5 percent to 2,721.58, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index sank 1.0 percent to 7,17052.

After streaking to numerous records in the first three weeks of the year, US stocks last week began to pull back. And Friday’s strong jobs report contributed to the sell-off amid rising concern the US Federal Reserve will accelerate the pace of interest rate hikes this year.

JJ Kinahan, chief market strategist of TD Ameritrade, said the key question as the pullback moved into its second week was whether investors would step in to purchase stocks at depressed values.

Investors have done this for than a year, each time a price decline offered bargain prices, preventing any major correction.

“We’re finally getting the (long-discussed) five percent drop,” Kinahan said. “Do the people who buy the dip come in again?”

A catalyst for the decline over the last week or so has been the rise in US Treasury bond yields.

AFP