Wall Street plunges
02-12-2008
Wall Street stocks plunged Monday, giving back most of their gains from the past week, amid bleak economic news from around the globe.The Dow Jones Industrial Average sank 679.95 points (7.70 percent) to close at 8,149.09, in the fourth-steepest point loss in history for the blue-chip index. The Nasdaq composite plummeted 137.50 points (8.95 percent) to 1,398.07 and the broad-market Standard & Poor's 500 index sank 80.03 points (8.93 percent) to 816.21. A pullback was expected after a huge snapback rally over the past several sessions, with the Dow posting its best five-day percentage increase since 1932 of 17 percent. But selling began early and quickly became a freefall. The US dollar and particularly the yen strengthened. Oil plunged more than 9 percent to $49 a barrel on Monday after OPEC deferred a decision on new supply cuts at a meeting over the weekend. Gold was trading higher.
