Investor uncertainty sunk Wall Street to its lowest level in three years on Wednesday as world cases of COVID-19 top 200,000 and are expected to keep rising. From the opening bell, the Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 1,300 points and maintained that fall for the rest of the trading session. The S&P 500 plunged lower during a massive morning sell-off, trigger the second market circuit breaker of the week, the first being on Monday. So far for March, the Dow is down 21.69% and the S&P 18.81%, making the month the worst the indices have seen since the financial crisis of 2008.
After market close, the New York Stock Exchange announced that its trading floor will move to a fully electronic trading system and temporarily close on March 23's market open. This move to close the trading floor came after pre-emptive tests for traders came back positive. The facilities to be close are the NYSE equities trading floor and the NYSE American Options trading floor in New York and NYSE Arca Options trading floor in San Francisco. For clarity, this is not a halt in trading but a push to move all trading online temporarily, where 80% of trading already takes place.
Here's how the market rested after Wednesday's trading session:
S&P 500 Index
Dow Jones Industrial Average
Nasdaq Composite Index
In Major Stock News, only six stocks on the Dow Jones ended Wednesday in positive territory; Walgreens Boots Alliance
In Stock Sector News, Energy took a massive hit during Wednesday's trading session, ending the day down -14.28%. No sector survived the sell-off; the performance losses were as follows: Financials -8.85%, Real Estate -7.46%, Industrials -7.15%, Materials -6.16%, Consumer Discretionary -4.93%, Utilities -4.64%, Information Technology -4.59%, Health Care -3.40%, Consumer Staples -3.07% and Communication Services -2.81%.
Lastly, in Commodities and Currency News, crude oil barrel prices sunk to 18-year lows with worries that the market sell-off could get much worse before anything gets better. West Texas Intermediate