Stock market slide again trips safety circuit breaker on Wall Street

March 16 (UPI) --

For the third time in a week, a safety circuit breaker was activated on Wall Street Monday after U.S. markets plummeted after the opening bell.

The S&P 500 shed 8 percent in early trading and prompted the mechanism to again cut power to trading infrastructure. The safety breaker, installed after the 1987 stock market crash to halt a market free fall, was activated twice last week.

The Dow had dropped more than 2,600 points within the first hour, despite the Federal Reserve making an emergency interest rate cut on Sunday to safeguard the U.S. economy. The S&P 500 was down almost 300 points and the Nasdaq was down 800 points.

The market plunge occurred after oil prices also sank Monday.

Brent crude fell 11 percent to just over $30 per barrel, its lowest price in four years. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude tumbled more than 8 percent and the New York Mercantile Exchange lost 7 percent.

Oil prices have reacted extremely negatively and we believe that we have not seen the bottom of the oil price just yet, Bjoernar Tonhaugen, head of oil markets at Rystad Energy, said. The potential loss of demand in March-April may dwarf anything the world has ever seen, just when OPEC-Plus producers open the floodgates of new supply to the market.

The Federal Reserve said Sunday it would cut interest rates to nearly zero and will inject $700 million in treasury and mortgage-backed securities.

Source: United Press International
(March 16, 2020 - 9:59 AM EDT)

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