Dow briefly falls 450 points, having worst opening day in 84 years

[MowCowWhoHow III]

Source: CNBC

U.S. stocks traded sharply lower Monday, the first day of trade for the year, weighed by renewed concerns of global economic slowdown and increased tensions in the Middle East. The overnight drop in Chinese stocks that triggered a circuit breaker also pressured sentiment.

The Dow Jones industrial average traded about 380 points lower. Earlier, the index fell more than 450 points, down more than 2.5 percent, on pace for its largest percent decline on the first trading day of the year since 1932.

The Dow attempted to hold above the psychologically key 17,000 level after falling below in intraday trade for the first time since October.

U.S. data reaffirmed concerns about global manufacturing. The U.S. December ISM Manufacturing Index was 48.2, below expectations and down from November's 48.6 print.

Read more: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nasdaq-falls-2-dow-plunges-143629728.html#

[jschurchin]

1. Day Isn't Over Yet

Wouldn't be surprised by lower than 500 points by the end of the day.

[jonno99]

2. So what triggered the sell-off? Fed tightening of interest rates? The index miss

didn't appear to be off that much...

[Proserpina]

3. China's Economic Collapse

Nobody in US buys Chinese goods for Xmas because they have no money from their starvation wages (those that are still employed). Europe's economy is disintegrating under Austerity, too, so China shuts down, market falls 7% in China and is shut down, Europe and US markets follow suit.

Don't expect US markets to hit shut down, not today anyway.

[jonno99]

5. Yep - I understand China being down has also pulled US stocks. I just haven't yet come across

why China is down. I'll look some more (though I don't for a minute discount your explanation).

[rtracey]

4. maybe

could be anything these days, could be the mess in the middle east, Some other countries came out against Iran today, Also China's market dropped 7% before they closed it down for the day, so...?

[turbinetree]

7. And to add more fuel to this..............................

just think if and when the TPP becomes law -----------------------who are you and I going to thank, when the "new" 401K's are assigned to this "stuff", and become more of a retirement vehicle instead of Defined Benefits--------------------------





Honk--------------------for a political revolution Bernie 2016

[Marty McGraw]

9. I think they already have been

an itty bitty doo-dad which supposedly makes a derivative package appear (pathetically somewhat) stable enough to trade.

[Orrex]

6. Congress needs to act quickly to protect the wealthy

[zazen]

8. ha!!! n/t

[Joe Nation]

10. Thom Hartmann called it or will call it soon enough

Several months back, I took all of my retirement savings out of the up and down stock market and had to listen to much whining from my investment company. I put everything in Money Market funds at about 1% interest a year. They have been contacting me ever since and trying to get me to switch back to one of their investment packages. The crash of 2016 is pretty much inevitable in my opinion. It seems that our economy is set up to crash every 8 years or so and it is about time for another crash. What do you think?

[jtuck004]

12. If by "crash" you mean purposeful and policy-driven theft enabled by political lap dogs

for the benefit of the people who bought their allegiance, sure.

If by crash you mean"oops, who coulda knowed" - oh hell no.

[Joe Nation]

13. Let's just call it a "correction"

[jtuck004]

14. Because they think it is more correct to take the money from your labor and put it in their donor's

pants?

I prefer to call it what it is. Theft.

[Duval]

17. That was very wise of you! I encouraged my son to do the same, but

he says "I have a special relationship with Bank of America". Sigh He is delusional and also a Republican. Excuse the redundancy.

[Joe Nation]

20. At least until the turmoil passes

I think we are in for some type of correction but how big and exactly when, I couldn't say.

[davidpdx]

18. Call them back and ask them if they would still make the same recommendation

If they do, tell them they are idiots.

[SheilaT]

11. Right now the Dow is holding steady at a loss of

about 380 points.

And keep in mind that a crash, or even a bit of a loss, can result in buying opportunities.

Also, the Dow goes up under Democratic Administrations, down under Republican ones. So if Hillary really is Republican Lite, I'd expect the market to do somewhat poorly while she's President. With Bernie, a lot better.

[whatthehey]

15. I've done pretty well on a couple of rebounders already. I love panics.

And no you don't have to be a financial genius. All I do is screen stocks with acceptable very basic financials like P/E ratio (any finance news page does the math for you) and liquidity ratios (just divide two numbers easily found on the same page) which drop early more than the overall market has and wait for them to bounce back a bit.

Last one I was in and out of TRGP for nearly 4% in under two hours. People scared of "the casino" would take YEARS to get that in a CD or savings account.

[SheilaT]

16. So at the end of the day the Dow closed down 276 points,

a whopping 1.58%.

I even got a call an hour or so ago from my financial guy (yeah, I'm one of *those*) who wanted to make sure I wasn't too concerned about this. And I wasn't.

[OilemFirchen]

21. "First trading day of the year".

Since when is that a significant metric?

FTR, the Dow dropped 22.6% on October 19, 1987.