The U.S. Stock Market Is Officially in a Correction. And Financial Stocks Are Now in a Bear Market

Sat Dec 15 2018
Lucy Harlow (4100 articles)
The U.S. Stock Market Is Officially in a Correction. And Financial Stocks Are Now in a Bear Market

The three major U.S. stock Indexes have all fallen more than 10% from their recent highs, enough to be considered a market correction. And it’s worse for financial stocks, often a market leader: The sector is down 20%, putting it in bear-market territory.

The S&P 500 closed Friday down 1.9% at 2,599.95. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell a little more than 2% to 24,100.51. And the Nasdaq Composite dropped 2.3% to close the week at 6,910.67. All three are in correction territory, having lost more than 10% during the past three months. That hasn’t happened since March 2016, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Financial stocks, which are seen as a bellwether for other sectors, have fallen harder The S&P 500 Financial Sector Index, which tracks bank and financial services stocks in the S&P 500, closed down 1% Friday at $ 400.72. That’s 20.2% down from its record high of 501.92 set in late January. When a stock or index falls more than 20% from its high, market participants generally consider it to have entered a bear market.

Among banks, Citigroup declined 1.3% Friday to $ 55.02 a share, while JPMorgan Chase declined 0.8% to $ 100.29 a share and Wells Fargo dropped 1% to $ 46.54 a share. Goldman Sachs fell 1.8% to $ 172.77 a share, while Morgan Stanley declined $ 2.4% to $ 39.64 a share.

U.S. stocks fell Friday after weaker-than-expected economic data from China and Europe added to concerns that the global economy is slowing down. U.S. stocks have been falling since early October on a number of negative factors—not just weaker growth in China, but also a trade war and rising interest rates.

Lucy Harlow

Lucy Harlow

Lucy Harlow is a senior Correspondent who has been reporting about Commodities, Currencies, Bonds etc across the globe for last 10 years. She reports from New York and tracks daily movement of various indices across the Globe