Dow plunges 2,250 points, trading halts almost immediately after opening

Wall Street trading was almost immediately halted on Monday morning as the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 took a dive.

The Dow fell 2,250 points, or almost 10 percent, while the S&P 500 fell 8 percent at the start of trading on Monday morning, triggering the stock market's circuit breaker and leading to a 15 minute trading pause once again. This was the third halt in trading in the past six sessions, notes The Wall Street Journal's Michael C. Bender.

In fact, as MSNBC's David Gura points out, the circuit breaker was triggered twice last week after about five minutes of trading, but on Monday, it took less than one minute.

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"We literally rang the bell and trading was halted," Yahoo's Ines Ferre said.

This comes after the Federal Reserve on Sunday announced it was slashing interest rates to near zero, with Fed Chair Jerome Powell saying the coronavirus pandemic "presents significant economic challenges."

President Trump on Sunday praised the Federal Reserve's interest rate cut, saying he was "very happy" with it after previously touting Friday's rally and sending a signed photo of the Dow's rise to Fox Business host Lou Dobbs. But The New York Times' Jim Tankersley noted Monday that "if the S&P drops one more time like it just did at opening, it will have erased all of its gains since Trump's inauguration."