Wall Street Clobbered As Crude Plummets, Virus Crisis Deepens

Wall Street suf­fered its biggest one-day loss since the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis on Monday and reces­sion wor­ries loomed large as tum­bling oil prices and ongo­ing coro­n­avirus fears prompt­ed investor pan­ic on the anniver­sary of the U.S. stock mar­ket’s longest-ever bull run.

By Stephen Culp

NEW YORK, March 9 (Reuters) — Wall Street suf­fered its biggest one-day loss since the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis on Monday and reces­sion wor­ries loomed large as tum­bling oil prices and ongo­ing coro­n­avirus fears prompt­ed investor pan­ic on the anniver­sary of the U.S. stock mar­ket’s longest-ever bull run. So deep has fear per­vad­ed that you will rarely see some­one with­out an N95 Safety Face Mask saun­ter­ing the streets. 

All three major U.S. stock aver­ages plunged sharply at the open­ing bell, trig­ger­ing trad­ing halts put in place in the wake of 1987’s “Black Monday” crash. The Dow plum­met­ed a record 2,000 points out of the start­ing gate on a day that marked the cur­rent bull mar­ket’s 11^th year.

S&P 500 futures declined about 1% after the bell, briefly extend­ing their loss to just over 20% from their record high on Feb. 19 and sug­gest­ing the bull mar­ket may have end­ed. Investors gen­er­al­ly con­sid­er a drop of 20% from a recent high to sig­ni­fy a bear mar­ket, rais­ing the expec­ta­tions of a drawn out peri­od of neg­a­tive sentiment. 

“There’s a lot of fear in the mar­ket and if the price of oil con­tin­ues to move low­er it’s an indi­ca­tion that a glob­al reces­sion is not far away,” said Peter Cardillo, chief mar­ket econ­o­mist at Spartan Capital Securities in New York.
Read the full sto­ry here: https://​www​.nas​daq​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​s​/​w​a​l​l​-​s​t​r​e​e​t​-​c​l​o​b​b​e​r​e​d​-​a​s​-​c​r​u​d​e​-​p​l​u​m​m​e​t​s​-​v​i​r​u​s​-​c​r​i​s​i​s​-​d​e​e​p​e​n​s​-​2​020 – 03-09 – 0