October is living up to its ominous reputation among stock investors.
Stocks on Wall Street tumbled again Thursday, as choppy early trading gave way to another bout of broad-based selling. The declines were widespread, touching everything from previously highflying tech shares to usually insulated sectors like consumer staples and utilities.
When the dust settled, every sector of the Standard & Poor’s 500 index had dropped, leaving the stock market bench mark down an additional 2.1 percent. That slump followed Wednesday’s 3.3 percent decline, which was the market’s biggest dive in eight months.
So far in October — which looms large in the minds of investors as the month of the 1929 and 1987 crashes — stocks are down 6.4 percent. That puts the month on a pace to be the worst October for stocks since 2008, when they fell nearly 17 percent.
“Today it feels a lot more like there’s just money coming out of the market,” said John Linehan, chief investment officer for equities at T. Rowe Price in Baltimore. “I think there’s a level of anxiety about the market, especially given how far we’ve come.”
Investors who have ridden the nearly decadelong bull market in stocks are now contending with a growing crop of concerns, including rising borrowing costs that could dampen economic growth and growing tensions between the United States and China. Worries about rising interest rates eased briefly after a report showing muted inflation helped send yields on government bonds lower. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note ended the day just below 3.15 percent, lower than it had been in several days.
But the easing of rates did little to comfort investors who are also worrying about deteriorating relations between Washington and Beijing. On Wednesday, U.S. officials said they had charged a Chinese intelligence official with espionage after he was extradited from Belgium. On Thursday, the Energy Department said it would tighten controls on Chinese imports of civil nuclear technology.
Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, warned Thursday that if the tensions between the United States and China continued to escalate, “the global economy would take a significant hit.”
