Investing.com - The Dow suffered its worst day since February as fears of rising interest rates and a meltdown in tech shares prompted investors to flee risk assets.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell about 3.15%. The S&P 500 fell 3.29%, while the Nasdaq Composite fell 4.08%.
A sea of red washed over Wall Street as investors shunned risk assets in favor of less riskier ones like bonds, which have become more attractive following a run up in yields.
The 10-year Treasury note yield rallied most of the day on stronger wholesale inflation data, but ended lower as post-auction supply hit the market. On Tuesday, it rose to the highest level since 2011.
The Labor Department said on Wednesday its producer price index for final demand increased 0.2% last month after slipping 0.1% in the prior month. In the 12 months through September, however, the PPI rose 2.6%, below economists' estimates for a 2.8% increase.
Techs were dragged lower by FAANG stocks, with Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) leading the decline. Netflix fell more than 8%.
Falling energy stocks, meanwhile, exacerbated the selloff in the broader market as oil prices fell sharply owing to reduced appetite for risk and concerns timid global growth may hurt energy demand.
Retailers offered some solace, bucking the trend lower as investors bet that U.S.-focused companies would better weather a potential slowdown in global growth.
Kohl’s (NYSE:KSS) and Dollar Tree (NASDAQ:DLTR) closed more than 1% higher.
Concerns over growth comes as the IMF lowered its global economic growth forecasts and warned that trade wars and rising import tariffs would weigh on commerce.
In corporate news, Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) stock fell nearly 6% after Deutsche Bank (DE:DBKGn) cut its price target on the e-commerce company's stock, citing concerns over a potential slowdown in sales in the third quarter of the year.
"We recently caught up with Alibaba and sensed that the company's September quarter (gross merchandise value) GMV could be softer than the June quarter, somewhat validating the weak July and August online retail sales growth reported earlier by NBS data," Deutsche Bank said.
The slump on Wall Street comes ahead of the start of the third-quarter earnings season, which gets underway in earnest Friday with results from major Wall Street banks.
Top S&P 500 Gainers and Losers Today:
Perrigo (NYSE:PRGO), Dollar Tree (NASDAQ:DLTR) and JM Smucker (NYSE:SJM) were the top S&P 500 gainers for the session.
Tiffany (NYSE:TIF), Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) and Ralph Lauren (NYSE:RL) were among the worst S&P 500 performers of the session.