Dow tumbles 300 points as biotech gets crushed

Investors sold even some of the year’s most resilient stocks.

Alcoa Inc. shares rose 5.7% to $9.59 after the aluminum maker said it would split into two publicly traded companies, one focusing on mining and refining and the other on more finished industrial products.

But not today, as gold prices are down about 1.1% in New York to around $1,130 an ounce.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted almost 2 percent – 313 points – by the end of trading Monday, to finish at 16001.

Media General soared 26 percent to $14.05 after Nexstar offered to buy the company in a deal valued at $4.1 billion. Mr. Dudley also emphasized that a rate increase could come at any Fed meeting, including in October.

Stocks have been turbulent in recent weeks amid confusion over the Federal Reserve’s tightening policy and concern over a slowdown in Asia.

Energy and raw-material-producing companies also declined as commodity prices fell after a report showed industrial profits in China dropped 8.8% in August from a year ago.

“I think this volatility will be with us for a while”, said Mace Blicksilver, director of Marblehead Asset Management. He said he expected growth in the second half will be a little bit weaker than in the first half.

Calming some worries about the impact of an emerging-market downturn, data today showed the world’s largest economy expanded more than previously forecast in the second quarter.

Supposedly Yellen had clarified everything on Thursday, and yet the market still went down, said Matt Maley, an equity strategist at Miller Tabak & Co LLC in New York. “The other issue is what’s going on in China”. Biotechs have rolled over.

With the biotech bull now over, we looked back at prior bear markets in the S&P 500 Biotech group to see how far they typically fall and how long they tend to last. “We’re losing what little leadership we had left”. The rout was sparked by a tweet last Monday from Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton suggesting there may be “price gouging” in the market for prescription drugs.

The S&P 500 ended 49 points, or 2.5%, lower while the Dow slipped 312 points (1.9%) and the Nasdaq fell 142 points (3%).

France’s market outperformed, however, given news consumer sentiment hit its highest mark since the financial crisis. The measure of market turbulence known as the VIX rose 0.6 percent Friday to 23.62, after earlier erasing an 11 percent drop.

Federal Reserve Bank of New York president William C. Dudley said on Monday that the central bank will “probably” raise interest rates later this year despite uncertainties over global growth. Eight groups decreased at least 1.1 percent. The preliminary Caixin/Markit manufacturing index fell to the lowest level in six years. Freeport-McMoRan has slumped 27 percent since the Fed said it was considering spillover risks to the USA economy from turmoil in global markets. It had plunged 2 percent the day before.

LABD is now up more than 48 percent over the past five trading days, but the ETF entered Monday as Direxion’s second-best leveraged ETF on a month-to-date basis, with a gain of 18.6 percent, according to issuer data. BorgWarner Inc. and Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. rose more than 1.8 percent.