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A bad day for US stocks just got a whole lot worse.After opening in the red and traveling lower in the early hours of trading, the S&P 500 appeared to stabilize in the early afternoon before selling accelerated with abandon. At around 2:30 p.m. ET, the benchmark started another leg down. It's now trading close to session lows, a loss of 1.7%.
The decline in the S&P 500 is now on pace to be the deepest since September 9, two months before the presidential election. The index still has a ways to go today, however, if it wants to rival that 2.5% drop, which came after Boston Federal Reserve President Eric Rosengren warned against waiting too long to raise interest rates.
The drop on Wednesday comes amid growing fury in Washington over a report that President Donald Trump sought to end the FBI's investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn
Further, market anxiety is being reflected by the CBOE Volatility Index, or VIX, a barometer of investor nervousness. Until Wednesday, the so-called fear gauge was hovering close to its lowest level on record. Now it has spiked by as much as 37%, also the biggest intraday increase since September 9.
And now, the scoreboard:
- Dow: 20,675.29, -304.46, (-1.45%)
- S&P 500: 2,363.21, -37.46 (-1.56%)
- Nasdaq: 6,036.69, -133.19 (-2.16%)
- US 10-year yield: 2.22%, -0.11
- WTI crude: $48.97, +0.31, (+0.64%)