Wall Street stocks drop as investors fret over US economic slowdown
Wall Street stocks fell on Monday, deepening the recent sell-off triggered by investor concerns over the impact of President Donald Trump’s policies on the US economy.
The S&P 500 index tumbled 2 per cent, after falling 3.4 per cent last week in its worst weekly performance in six months, as big US banks ditched their previous bullish forecasts for stocks this year.
The Nasdaq Composite, which has been hit by a sell-off in big tech stocks in recent weeks, was down 3.1 per cent, dragged down by a fall of more than 8 per cent for Tesla.
The carmaker’s shares surged following Trump’s election victory in November but have now given up all of those gains, losing more than 50 per cent of their value since their December high.
“It is getting ugly,” said Tomasz Wieladek, an economist at US asset manager T Rowe Price. “There is the realisation that Trump doesn’t care about the real economy in the short term. Markets are now beginning to take a trade war future seriously… and beginning to realise how painful this will be,” he said.
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