Wall Street Journal warns of stock “stampede”

 

As Dow drops another 560 points

Wall Street Journal warns of stock “stampede”

By
Nick Beams

8 December 2018

The sell-off on Wall Street continued Friday, with the Dow ending the day down 560 points. The new plunge came amid rising concerns over the impact of the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on the US-China trade conflict, slower global economic growth, and the intensification of class conflict as evidenced by events in France.

Reporting on the sell-off, the Wall Street Journal said the “retreat” away from US stocks “turned into a stampede Friday, with major indexes suffering declines of more than 4 percent for the week and their worst start to a December since 2008.”

The previous day the newspaper had played its part in trying to boost the markets, following a fall of 784 points in the Dow in the opening hours of trading, by publishing a front-page report that the US Federal Reserve was considering pulling back on interest rate rises next year. This led to an upturn, with the markets closing just 80 points down for the day.

On Friday, both the Dow and the S&P 500 indexes opened with slight gains, but then quickly moved into negative territory, with the Dow down by more than 660 points at one stage. Over the course of the week, the Dow finished down 4.5 percent, the S&P 500 4.6 percent lower and the Nasdaq off by 4.9 percent.

The larger fall in the Nasdaq reflects the sharp decline in tech stocks, which have been hard hit by the deepening US-China trade conflict because of the impact it could have on both the companies’ global supply chains and markets.

Reporting on the market downturn, the Financial Times pointed to the “bearish momentum” and the emergence of the so-called “death cross” in the graph of the S&P 500 index, as its 50-day…

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