Updated at 4:31 p.m. ETThe stock market went on a wild ride again on Monday, with the Dow Jones industrial average closing down 1,175 points, its worst point drop in history. The Dow closed down 4.6 percent and turned negative for the year.At one point Monday afternoon, the Dow was down 1,579 points — the largest intraday point drop in the history of the index. The previous largest point drop for the Dow was 778 points. That was in September 2008, in the midst of the financial crisis.Market participants were focused on the threat of higher inflation after Friday's jobs report showed a pickup in wages, which portends more interest rate increases from the Federal Reserve."I think we are in a changing environment where it looks like we're going to have a bit higher inflation and so that has markets on edge," Gus Faucher, chief economist of the PNC Financial Services Group, told NPR's Windsor Johnston. "And I think volatility is likely to be higher in 2018 than it was in 2017."Analysts suggest that program trading caused the wild sell-off, NPR's John Ydstie reported. "As quickly as the market fell, it recovered much of the ground it had lost as investors remembered the economy and corporate earnings remain strong," he added. The Dow closed at 24,345.75. Monday's losses came on top of Friday's 666-point drop in the blue-chip index, which resulted in the worst week for the index in two years. Other major stock indexes also fell Monday, with the S&P 500 down 113 points, or 4.1 percent, and the Nasdaq down 273 points, or 3.8 percent. In the past week, both the Dow and the S&P 500 have now lost over 5 percent from their recent all-time highs.Other stock indexes around the world also fell Monday, including London's FTSE 100, which closed down 1.5 percent, and Japan's Nikkei, which fell 2.5 percent. Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org/.
Dow Plunges 1,175, The Biggest Point Drop In History
