Banks fuel Dow’s worst day in 6 weeks

Fear is making a comeback on Wall Street.

The Dow dropped 200 points on Thursday, putting the index on track for its deepest decline since stocks bottomed out on February 23. The S&P 500 fell 1.3% and returned to negative territory on the year, while the Nasdaq lost 1.6%.

Banks helped put the markets in a bad mood, with Citigroup and Goldman Sachs slumping as much as 4% on concerns about profits being squeezed by extremely low interest rates.

Up until earlier this week the stock market had been in the midst of a pretty remarkable comeback from the terrible start to 2016 when cheap oil and recession fears caused investors to freak out. But now the Dow is on track for its worst week in two months.

“The U.S. market was trading in a fantasyland on its own while markets around it were selling off pretty harshly. That was unsustainable,” said Peter Boockvar, chief market analyst at The Lindsey Group.

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