U.S. Stocks End Their Worst Week Since 2011

China’s stock markets have little connection to the rest of its economy but two sharp price declines this week have focused attention on the slowdown in Chinese growth.

NEW YORK (AP) — A wave of late selling pummeled USA stocks Friday and pushed the market to its worst week in four years.

Having rocked world markets at the start of 2016, China will remain in the spotlight in the coming week, with data that may help gauge how sharply growth is slowing in the world’s second-largest economy.

China’s stock markets stopped trading after just 29 minutes, ending the shortest trading day in Chinese history.

Hong Kong – Chinese stocks nosedived Thursday, triggering their second daylong trading halt this week and sending share markets, Asian currencies and oil prices lower as investor jitters rippled across the globe. JPMorgan Chase slid 4 percent, while Nordstrom tumbled 5.5 percent. It gained roughly 1.7 percent against the dollar and 1.5 percent versus the euro. With the drop, the index has fallen to its lowest intraday level in well over six years.

It’s not the first time China’s stock market has crashed over the past year, with dramatic sell offs also taking place last summer. Those halts, which were triggered twice this week, are increasingly seen as inadequate for preventing volatility. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index skidded 7 points, or 0.3 percent, to 1,936. The Nasdaq gave up 45 points, or 1 percent, to 4,643. The Dow average is down 9.8 percent from its peak in May, and the S&P 500 index has lost 8.8 percent since then. Oil prices have plunged 12 percent since Tuesday. Urban Outfitters climbed 79 cents, or 3.6 percent, to $22.71. Benchmark U.S. crude futures fell $1.43, or 4.2 percent, to $32,54 in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Money managers said the coming week, when big companies such as J.P. Morgan ChaseJPM -2.24 % & Co. and Intel Corp.INTC -1.04 % begin to report fourth-quarter earnings, may provide the catalyst to woo more investors into the stock market.

US stock markets have also fallen a lot, probably as a result of the Chinese decline.

2016 has started with a series of warning signs about China’s economy. Worries about China’s economic slowdown were reinforced by a new report released on Wednesday that showed the country’s services sector grew at the weakest pace in 17 months in December. Thursday’s market plunge may have been exacerbated by investors rushing to sell before they were locked out by the automatic trading suspension, some analysts said.

Department stores were among the biggest losers on the S&P 500.

In a sign of the concern among investors, gold jumped another 1.5% to $1,108 an ounce.

Adding to the risk-off mood, crude oil prices hit new 11-year lows as the face-off between Saudi Arabia and Iran over Riyadh’s execution of a Shi’ite cleric was seen extinguishing any chance of major producers cooperating to cut production. Apple, the world’s largest publicly traded company, dipped 3.5 percent and touched its lowest price since September 2014. Shares of Transocean Ltd. (RIG) lost 2.5% in premarket trade, Schlumberger Ltd. (SLB) fell 2%, and Chevron Corp. Its stock has plunged 84 percent over the last two years.

The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) also wrong-footed traders by reportedly intervening heavily to defend the yuan in offshore trade, reversing a decline of more than 1 percent that took it to a record low of 6.7600 per dollar.

The price of gold and silver both rose more than 1 percent, with gold at $1,103.90 an ounce and silver at $14.16 an ounce.

Late Thursday afternoon, the Chinese central bank said its foreign-exchange reserves had dropped by $108 billion in December, to $3.33 trillion, amid heavy intervention to break the fall of the renminbi.

Bonds prices rose. The yield on 10-year Treasury bond fell to 2.15 percent from 2.17 percent.

Tracking this, Brent rose 58 cents to $34.33 a barrel by 0327 GMT, near an intraday high of $34.72. 25 cent to 3.53 a bushel; March oats were down 3.25 cents to 2.0875 a bushel; while March soybeans lost.