Fear the coronavirus is turning into a pandemic sparked another major stampede out of stocks, prompting the worst point-drop for the Dow in history as stocks crumbled 4 percent.
Conway G.
Gittens looks at the damage.
Dow nosedives 1,190 points into correction territory
Wall Street hit records in the wrong direction Thursday as the coronavirus showed up in more countries, sparking fear the outbreak is turning into a pandemic.
The Dow nosedived more than 4 percent or 1190 points - the biggest one-day point plunge ever.
The S&P 500 fell 137 points.
The Nasdaq crumbled 414 points.
Losses so for this week have been staggering.
The Dow has shed more than 3,200 points and is on track for its worst week since the financial crisis.
The market overall has dropped more than 10 percent from the record highs set just last week - putting it into a full-fledged correction… the fastest correction in history.
The continued stampede out of stocks into government bonds pushed the yield on the benchmark 10-year note to its lowest ever for a third straight day.
There is a growing belief the Federal Reserve should respond by lowering interest rates..
But John Maier, chief investment officer at Global X wonders how much that would help.
SOUNDBITE (ENGLISH): JOHN MAIER, CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER, GLOBAL X, SAYING: "There's a lot of fear out there and potentially there is some pressure politically and if you look at the implied probability for one, two or three rate cuts it has increased meaningfully over the past six days.
But perhaps the market is saying - may say that after you cut a few more times, what else?
What other tools do you have?" There were other reasons to fear a spreading virus will slow global economic growth and corporate earnings.
Facebook canceled its developer's conference scheduled for May 6th due to fears over the coronavirus threat.
The annual event held in California usually attracts roughly 5,000 people.
A person was detected with the coronavirus infection from unknown origins in the populous state on Wednesday... Microsoft warned sales in its PC division will take a hit from supply chain disruptions due to the outbreak... And electronic payment company PayPal says its seeing a global slowdown in online transactions because of the outbreak and so quarterly sales will come in at the low end of its forecast.
The economic outlook has darkened so severely, Goldman Sachs is now predicting U.S. companies will see zero earnings growth this year.