Wall Street's three major indexes tumbled on Tuesday, with the Dow registering its biggest quarterly decline since 1987 and the S&P 500 suffering its deepest quarterly drop since the financial crisis on growing evidence of massive economic damage from the coronavirus pandemic.
In one of the fastest turns into a bear market, the S&P 500 and the Dow both ended the first quarter more than 20% below the end of 2019, as the health crisis worsened in the United States and brought business activity to a standstill.
It was also the S&P's biggest first-quarter decline on record as consumers were advised to stay at home, leading businesses to announce temporary closures and massive staff furloughs.
As a result, economists have slashed 2020 growth expectations and investors, eying dismal quarterly financial reports, fear corporate defaults and mass layoffs would lead to a deep recession. An unprecedented round of fiscal and monetary stimulus had helped equity markets edge higher last week following wild swings that saw the benchmark S&P 500 rise 9% and slump 12% in two consecutive sessions.
But this was not enough to give investors confidence.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 410.32 points, or 1.84%, to 21,917.16, the S&P 500 lost 42.06 points, or 1.60%, to 2,584.59 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 74.05 points, or 0.95%, to 7,700.10.
The technology-heavy Nasdaq registered its biggest quarterly decline since the end of 2018.
The utilities and real estate sectors were among the biggest decliners on Tuesday, with 4% and 3% declines respectfully following a recent rally, when investors sought ways to weather the economic slump.
The energy index rose nearly 1.6%, boosted by a rebound in prices on the day.
After bouncing between gains and losses, the technology sector ended the day down 1.9%.
Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 1.25-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.04-to-1 ratio favoured decliners. The S&P 500 posted one new 52-week high and no new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 14 new highs and 37 new lows. On US exchanges 13.13 billion shares changed hands compared with the 15.75 billion average for the last 20 sessions.