Dow kicks off new year with 350-point drop

Stocks opened down in 2019 after a dismal end to 2018.

(Image credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

published 2 January 2019

New year, same stock market.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped more than 350 points as markets opened Wednesday, the first trading day of 2019. Asian and European markets also opened down, sparking fears of a "global slowdown," per The Washington Post.

The Dow dropped 5.6 percent throughout 2018 while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite also saw overall drops, marking the worst year for stocks in a decade, CNN says. That same trend continued Wednesday as the S&P 500 initially dropped 1.3 percent and the Nasdaq went down 1.7 percent. Wednesday's loss likely stemmed from an economic report in China showing growth in its manufacturing sector was slowing.

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The report out of China led its Hong Kong Hang Seng market and Shanghai Composite to close down for the day. Markets in Australia, France, and the U.K. also closed down more than a percent, per CNN. That translated into big losses for Caterpillar and a slew of tech stocks, says CNBC. It was an especially bad day for Tesla, whose stocks fell 8 percent after announcing it would cut its car prices by $2,000, Bloomberg reports.

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Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.

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