Stocks Extend Losses, With Dow Falling More Than 400 Points

By Avie Schneider / NPR

Published February 5, 2018 at 4:16 AM PST

This story was published more than 6 years ago.

On the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, trader Tommy Kalikas looks on as stock indexes continued to fall Monday.

Updated at 1:19 p.m ET

The stock market continued to lose ground Monday after Friday's steep drop, with the Dow Jones industrial average down more than 400 points in afternoon trading.

Market participants were focused on the threat of higher inflation after Friday's jobs report showed a pickup in wages, which portends more interest rate increases from the Federal Reserve.

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"I think we are in a changing environment where it looks like we're going to have a bit higher inflation and so that has markets on edge," Gus Faucher, chief economist of the PNC Financial Services Group, told NPR's Windsor Johnston. "And I think volatility is likely to be higher in 2018 than it was in 2017."

At 1:18 p.m., the Dow was down 411 points, or 1.7 percent. Monday's losses came on top of Friday's 666-point drop in the blue-chip index, resulting in the worst week for the index in two years.

Other stock indexes around the world also fell Monday, including London's FTSE 100, which closed down 1.5 percent, and Japan's Nikkei, which fell 2.5 percent.