Global stock sell-off slams Wall Street as oil prices leap on Iran war woes
The Dow ended down 403 points, after plunging over 1,200 earlier in the day
A sell-off for stocks wrapped around the world and hit Wall Street on Tuesday, while oil prices climbed even higher on worries about the widening war with Iran. But the big moves that rocked markets in the morning eased substantially as the day progressed.
By the end of trading, the S&P 500 had sunk 0.9 per cent. That would be a solid loss on a typical day, but the index had been down as much as 2.5 per cent in the morning because of worries that the war may do more sustained damage to the economy than feared.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 403 points, or 0.8 per cent, after plunging more than 1,200 points earlier in the morning. The Nasdaq composite pared its loss to 1 per cent.
It was just a day earlier that US stocks opened the morning with a sharp loss, only to recover all of it and end the day with a tiny gain. Helping to drive that rebound was a record showing that past wars and conflicts in the Middle East have not usually meant long-term pain for US stocks.
But that was with the caveat that oil prices did not jump too high, like above US$100 per barrel. On Tuesday, oil prices rose again and raised more alarms. The price for a barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, briefly leapt above US$84.
The jump lessened through the day, though, which helped moderate the losses for stocks. Brent settled at US$81.40, up 4.7 per cent. A barrel of benchmark US crude rose 4.7 per cent to US$74.56.