Publications
Partners
New York -US shares sank more than 2.0% on Thursday with the Dow dropping to its lowest level for 2015 as worries spread about the strength of the world economy.
The broad-based selloff capped a day of sharp falls from Asia to Europe, as concerns mounted that China's slowdown would drag on global growth.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished down 358.04 points (2.06%) at 16 990.69.
The broad-based S&P 500 dropped 43.88 (2.11%) to 2,035.73, while the tech-rich Nasdaq gave up 141.56 (2.82%) at 4 877.49.
The Dow sank below its previous low for the year, 17 164.95 on January 31, pulled under in part by a tough downgrade of entertainment giant Walt Disney by analysts at broker Bernstein Research.
Disney shares tumbled 6.0 percent, sucking others in the sector with them: Netflix (-7.8%), Twenty-First Century Fox (-4.2%), Viacom (-6.3%), Dreamworks (-5.4%) and CBS Corp (-5.1%).
Banks also suffered, with Bank of America off 4.2%, Morgan Stanley 3.4% and JPMorgan Chase 2.5%.
In top tech stocks, Apple fell 1.8%, Facebook 4.9% and Amazon 3.0%. During the session Twitter shares shrank below their 2013 IPO price of $26 for the first time, going as low as $25.92, but ended exactly on the IPO mark, off 5.8%.
Peter Cardillo of Rockwell Global Capital said the selloff could mark the start of "a full-blown correction... for the reasons we all know about."
He pointed to "oil prices continuing to go down, weaker economic global activity - and that's obviously stemming from China."
Evidence for that could be seen elsewhere among the Dow blue chips, with, after Disney, the biggest losers Merck (-4.5%) and Boeing (-4.0%).
Bond prices rose. The yield on the 10-year US Treasury fell to 2.07% from 2.20% on Tuesday, while the 30-year dropped to 2.75% from 2.86%. Bond prices and yields move inversely.
