Wall Street's sell-off gets worse as worries build about the economy
World
Wall Street’s sell-off gets worse as worries build about the economy
NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street’s sell-off is worsening Monday as worries about the economy and President Donald Trump’s tariffs send U.S. stocks further from their record set just last month.
The S&P 500 was down 1.4% in early trading, coming off its worst week since September. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 430 points, or 1%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 2.1% lower.
The main measure of the U.S. stock market is on track for a seventh swing of more than 1%, up or down, in the last eight days following a scary stretch dominated by worries that Trump’s on -and- off -again tariffs will either hurt the economy directly or create enough uncertainty to drive U.S. companies and consumers into an economy-harming paralysis. The S&P 500 is down 7.4% from its all-time high set on Feb. 19.
The economy has already given some signals of weakening, mostly through surveys showing increased pessimism. And a widely followed collection of real-time indicators compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta suggests the U.S. economy may already be shrinking.
Asked over the weekend whether he was expecting a recession in 2025, Trump told Fox News Channel: “I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America. That’s a big thing.” He then added, “It takes a little time. It takes a little time.”
The U.S. job market is still showing stable hiring, to be sure, and the economy ended last year running at a solid rate. But economists are marking down their forecasts for how the economy will perform this year.
At Goldman Sachs, for example, David Mericle cut his estimate for U.S. economic growth to 1.7% from 2.2% for the end of 2025 over the year before, largely because tariffs look like they’ll be bigger than he was previously forecasting. He sees a one-in-five chance of a recession over the next year.
The worries hitting Wall Street have so far been hurting some of its biggest stars the most. Big Tech stocks and companies that rode the artificial-intelligence frenzy in recent years have slumped sharply.
Nvidia fell another 2.6% Monday to bring its loss for the year so far to 18.3%. It’s a steep drop-off from its nearly 820% surge over 2023 and 2024.
Apple fell 3.2% and was the heaviest weight on the S&P 500 after the iPhone maker confirmed it was delaying the AI update to its Siri personal assistant until 2026.
It’s not just Big Tech. Investors are sending prices sharply lower for all kinds of investments whose momentum had earlier seemed nearly impossible to stop at times, such as bitcoin. The cryptocurrency’s value has dropped back toward $83,000 from more than $106,000 in December.
Instead, investors have been herding into U.S. Treasury bonds as they look for something safer to own with all the uncertainty. That has sent prices for Treasurys sharply higher, which in turn has sent down their yields.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell again to 4.24% from 4.32% late Friday. It’s been falling sharply since January, when it was approaching 4.80%, as worries about the economy have grown.
On Wall Street, Redfin jumped 77% after Rocket said it would buy the digital real estate brokerage in an all-stock deal valuing it at $1.75 billion. Rocket’s stock sank 9.7%.
In stock markets abroad, European indexes also fell following a mixed session in Asia.
Indexes fell 1.8% in Hong Kong and 0.2% in Shanghai after China said consumer prices fell in February for the first time in 13 months. It’s the latest signal of weakness for the world’s second-largest economy, as persistent weak demand was compounded by the early timing of the Lunar New Year holiday.
