Feb. 5 (UPI) — The Dow Jones industrial average continued the massive slide that began Friday by dropping 300 more points at the start of trading Monday.
The index regained some of the losses by the end of the morning.
By 1 p.m., the Dow was down 354 points — a 1.4 percent drop.
The bad start Monday extended the 666-point drop that happened Friday, a drop of about 2.5 percent. It was its worst finish since June 2016, when British voters chose to leave the European Union. The drop on Friday was the sixth-largest point drop in history.
The technology-heavy Nasdaq market has fallen in six of the last eight trading sessions.
An unidentified White House official said, “We’re always concerned when the market loses any value, but we’re also confident in the economy’s fundamentals,” CNBC reported.
The Dow is still up more than 30 percent since the 2016 presidential election, and President Donald Trump has often pointed to the rise as a signal that his economic policies and plans are working.
The fall came after the Labor Department reported a 2.9 percent increase in hourly earnings, a signal that inflation could be imminent.
Another concern is that the Federal Reserve, under the direction of new Chairman Jerome Powell, will continue interest rate increases, which could slow the economy and the markets.
