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The Dow closed below the 20,000 mark for the first time in more than three years amid widening alarm on Wall Street over the Chinese virus. The Dow Jones industrial average finished Wednesday at 19,898.92, off 1,338.46 points, or 6.3 percent, as investors looking to raise cash liquidated nearly everything they could, including safe-haven assets …
The Dow closed below the 20,000 mark for the first time in more than three years amid widening alarm on Wall Street over the Chinese virus.
The Dow Jones industrial average finished Wednesday at 19,898.92, off 1,338.46 points, or 6.3 percent, as investors looking to raise cash liquidated nearly everything they could, including safe-haven assets like gold and government-issued Treasury bonds — a selloff not seen since the depths of the 2008 financial crisis.
As losses accelerated in the afternoon, the Dow had briefly plunged more than 2,300 points and well below 19,827.25 — the place where it closed on Jan. 20, 2017, the day Trump was sworn into office.
That’s despite the White House’s continued efforts to keep the coronavirus from kneecapping the economy. On Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin asked Congress to give his office the authority to temporarily backstop money markets, as industries from airlines to hotels and restaurants asked for federal handouts.
A similar tumble in the S&P 500 had triggered a marketwide circuit breaker on Wednesday for the fourth time in less than two weeks. The benchmark index recovered some of its earlier losses to close at 2,398.10, off 5.2 percent. The Nasdaq lost 4.7 percent to close at 6,989.84.
All three indexes have now slid more than 25 percent from their February highs.
Stocks had surged Tuesday as the Trump administration pushed for a coronavirus spending package that could grow to more than $1 trillion. But those hopes appeared to fade Wednesday as the number of cases worldwide surpassed 200,000 and millions of people remained shut in their homes.
“The greatest market ever is gone,” said Donald Selkin, chief market strategist at Newbridge Securities. “This shows that maybe there’s a lack of confidence in what the administration has done. They need much more.”
The coronavirus crisis has raised fears about the global economy entering a recession, given that measures taken to slow its spread have dampened consumer spending, forced some businesses to close and greatly reduced travel around the world.
Shares of Hilton and Marriott slid 12.6 percent and 15.2 percent, respectively, as the latter said it had begun to furlough tens of thousands of workers. Boeing’s stock slid 18 percent, while Citigroup’s stock lost 9.5 percent as concerns mounted about a possible cash crunch for banks.
Shares of Exxon Mobil tumbled 6.4 percent as crude oil prices plummeted as a price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia was compounded by slackening demand. West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures sank 24 percent to a low of $20.37 a barrel, their lowest level in 18 years.
“Oil prices seem to be fighting a three-headed monster that is a global recession, oversupply deluge, and demand destruction,” Ed Moya, senior market analyst at OANDA, wrote in a Tuesday commentary. “It doesn’t seem like anyone is getting on a plane anytime soon and with social lockdowns likely to remain in place for at least a month, oil seems like it has only one direction to go.”
Falling bond prices, signalling frantic selling by large firms short on cash, also unsettled investors Wednesday, analysts said. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves inversely to price, jumped to a high of 1.26 percent Wednesday after falling below 0.7 percent earlier in the week.
The prospect of a massive stimulus package ballooning the federal deficit is likely driving up bond yields, working against the Fed’s efforts to push them down, according Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG Union Bank.
“The reason investors got cold feet on yesterday’s rally was that the stimulus package was so big that it was gonna be a budget buster for the federal government,” Rupkey said.
The panic reached a fever pitch on Wall Street early this week, leading the Dow to shed nearly 3,000 points on Monday and drop below 20,000 for the first time in three years Tuesday morning.
The White House this week proposed aggressive measures to shore up the US economy, including cash payments to struggling Americans, deferrals for tax payments and direct aid to pandemic-battered industries such as airlines. Those would complement the Federal Reserve’s moves to slash interest rates to near zero and restart its bond-buying program known as quantitative easing.
But it’s unclear how quickly Congress will pass a stimulus package and unlikely that the virus will abate as lawmakers negotiate over what steps to take.
“There’s certainly a lot of forced selling and systematic selling which is certainly having an effect across asset classes,” said Sahak Manuelian, managing director and head of equity trading at Wedbush Securities. “Everything’s under pressure. There’s a lot of uncertainty.”
