Stocks were clobbered Friday on Wall Street — a brutal finish to the worst week in the market in four years. The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 530 points, the ninth-biggest point decline in its history. Investors worried about signs of a slowdown in the Chinese economy that could hammer companies and countries around the world. The stock of Apple, which depends heavily on demand from China, fell more than 6 percent. The Dow finished at 16,459. It fell more than 1,000 points this week alone and is down more than 10 percent from its all-time high in May — the definition of a market correction. That has not happened in four years.


The Dow's decline for the day came to 3.1 percent. The Standard & Poor's 500 index, a broader gauge of the stock market, finished down 3.2 percent and closed below 2,000 for the first time since early this year. "Right now there is a feeling of fear in the marketplace, and all news is interpreted negatively and it's interpreted indiscriminately," Tom Digenan, the head of U.S. equities at UBS Global Asset Management, told CNBC. In percentage terms, the decline on Friday was nowhere close to the worst of all time. On Black Monday in 1987, when the Dow fell 508 points, it represented a 22 percent decline. The damage on Friday wasn't limited to Apple. John Deere stock fell more than 8 percent and Microsoft more than 5 percent. Energy stocks and technology stocks were hammered across the board.

Utility stocks, seen as a relatively stable bet in a rough market, fared the best, but even they were down more than 1 percent. There was some good news in the sell-off: The price of crude oil plunged below $40 a barrel for the first time since the financial crisis in 2009. Gas has already fallen to a nationwide average of $2.63 a gallon — 80 cents lower than a year ago.


http://www.nbcnews.com/business/markets/stock-market-plunge-dow-plunges-lowest-level-year-china-fears-n413916

Oil, commodities prices lurch lower amid market turmoil


Investors took flight after the Chinese stock market posted its biggest one-day loss since the height of the global financial crisis in 2007, plunging more than 8 per cent.

The 19-commodity Thomson Reuters/Core Commodity CRB Index has shed more than 16 per cent so far this year.

Oil led the downward charge as Brent crude futures fell more than $2 (U.S.) a barrel to their lowest since March 2009.

“Today’s falls are not about oil market fundamentals. It’s all about China,” Carsten Fritsch, senior oil analyst at Commerzbank in Frankfurt, told Reuters Global Oil Forum.

“The fear is of a hard landing and that things get out of the control of the Chinese authorities.”

Brent touched an intraday low of $43.28 a barrel, a fall of 4.7 per cent.

In metals, copper and aluminum hit their lowest since 2009 while iron ore and steel futures in China slid sharply to reach their downside limit.

Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange fell as much as 3 per cent to $4,903 a tonne, its lowest since July 2009. Copper has shed 22 per cent in 2015, on track for its third consecutive yearly fall.

Gold edged down, but remained close to a seven-week high as the dollar and shares tumbled.

Spot gold shed 0.5 per cent to $1,154.81 an ounce as investors took profits after the metal hit its highest since July 7 on Friday.

“Gold is holding on to some of the gains it made last week and that speaks to the difficulty in the global equity market right now,” Mitsubishi Corp strategist Jonathan Butler said.

Grains also took a hit as U.S. soybeans fell to a fresh six-year low, corn lost more than 1 per cent and wheat slid 2 per cent to a near two-week low.

An improved U.S. supply outlook also weighed on prices and Chicago Board of Trade November soybeans, the most actively traded contract, fell more than 2 per cent to a contract low of $8.71-1/2 a bushel.

In coal, the most common fuel source for electricity generation, API2 2016 futures hit 12-year lows last week, and physical prices for cargoes from Australia’s Newcastle or South Africa’s Richards Bay terminals are back to levels last seen before the 2008/2009 boom and bust.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/oil-prices-extend-fall-on-china-and-oversupply/article26069728/

Markets take a wild ride: Dow plummets, bounces back, then plummets again

After an unprecedented 1,000-point decline at the open on Monday, the Dow closed with a loss of nearly 600 points.

It was an extremely turbulent day for U.S. stocks driven by deep fears about China's economic slowdown. Stocks staged a comeback that nearly brought the Dow back into positive territory but that ultimately failed. The 588-point decline was the worst for the Dow since August 2011.

Global fears about China's economic slowdown are shaking stock markets around the world for a second week in a row. The wave of selling knocked the S&P 500 into correction mode for the first time since 2011 and the Dow to its lowest close in a year and a half.

Within minutes after the opening bell, the Dow plummeted 1,089 points. That is the largest point loss ever during a trading day, surpassing the Flash Crash of 2010. We have not seen this level of full-blown panic in markets for quite some time," said Peter Kenny, chief market strategist at Clear Pool Group, a financial technology firm. Stock prices for a number of iconic American companies declined dramatically in an instant. Shares of General Electric (GE) and Pepsi (PEP) crashed more than 20% apiece at one point, while Costco (COST) fell 16%.

Dramatic declines caused stocks and exchange-traded funds to be automatically halted by stock exchanges more than 1,200 times on Monday, according to Nasdaq. It all started with Shanghai's 8.5% drop.The dramatic selling began overseas. China's Shanghai Composite plummeted 8.5%, wiping out all of its massive gains so far this year. Not only has an apparent bubble in Chinese equities popped, but the country's economy may be slowing much faster than feared. Last week's big selloff gathered serious momentum after China said its manufacturing activity -- a critical metric on growth -- tumbled to a six-year low in July.



China is the world's second-biggest economy. Its explosive growth in the last two decades has been the engine for the global economy. Its enormous appetite for raw materials like oil, copper and iron ore fueled global growth, especially in emerging markets like Brazil that are rich in natural resources. But that story has been completely derailed by China's economic slowdown. Just how much China slows down matters greatly to investors around the world.Fears about the health of China's economy have ratcheted up to the point that the S&P 500, made up the largest U.S. companies, is now sitting in "correction" territory -- a 10% decline from a recent peak. Both the Dow and Nasdaq fell into correction mode on Friday, the first since 2011. It's worth remembering that these steep losses come after a tremendous bull run for stocks.

The S&P 500 has skyrocketed 220% since bottoming out at 666 during the Great Recession in March 2009. Even at its lows on Monday, it was at 1,866.86. Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic adviser at Allianz, believes longer term the correction will be a healthy thing for the market.
"It will bring financial markets closer to what's justified by fundamentals. Therefore, there will be less of a risk of a financial collapse down the road," El-Erian told CNN.


Oil continues downward march too


Crude oil plunged below $39 a barrel on Monday for the first time since 2009. It settled at $38.24 a barrel. A global economic slowdown is eating into demand for oil at a time when supplies remain extremely elevated. Another sign of fear: The 10-year Treasury yield slid below 2% on Monday. That's the lowest level since April and a sign that investors are fleeing to the relative safety of American government debt.
It also signals that Wall Street believes the Federal Reserve may have to delay its expected interest rate hike from September until later in the year or even 2016.



Ed Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research, believes the selloff has created an opportunity for investors "with the stomach to jump in." "I think we'll see the markets make a comeback. The fundamentals of the U.S. economy remain good, especially compared with everybody else," Yardeni said. That would mean the bull market that began more than six years ago will survive. The S&P 500 would need to close below 1,708 to be classified a bear market, which is defined as a 20% decline from a previous high. The S&P closed at 1,893. Germany, on the other hand, tumbled into a bear market on Monday.







http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/24/investing/stocks-markets-selloff-china-crash-dow/index.html

US stocks open sharply higher after 6-day slump


U.S. stocks are opening sharply higher Wednesday after slumping for six straight days amid concern that growth in China was slowing more quickly than previously thought. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 370 points, or 2.4 percent, to 16,041 as of 9:37 a.m. Eastern. The Standard & Poor's 500 index gained 41.09 points, or 2.1 percent, to 1,906.61. The Nasdaq composite climbed 101 points, or 2.3 percent, to 4,607. Treasury bonds fell, pushing up the yield on the benchmark 10-year note to 2.16 percent.




http://news.yahoo.com/asian-stocks-post-modest-gains-china-rate-cut-061523425.html#