Dow drops 800 points, closes 370 points down

New York — Wall Street joined in a worldwide cascade of despair Monday over the financial crisis, driving the Dow Jones industrials to their biggest loss ever during a trading day. Even a big afternoon rally failed to keep the Dow from its first close below 10,000 since 2004.

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The sell-off came despite the $700 billion U.S. government bailout package, which was signed into law Friday after two weeks in which traders had appeared to count on the rescue as their only hope to avoid a market meltdown.

At its worst point, the Dow was down more than 800 points, an intraday record. The stock market rallied during the final 90 minutes of the trading day, and the Dow finished down about 370 points at 9,955.50.

Ted Fee, an associate professor of finance at MSU, said the financial crisis in Europe and Asia is the primary reason for this latest stock market plunge.

Fee said overseas governments have been slower than the U.S. government to implement bailout plans, so the markets continue to slide.

“Once these rescue plans are in place is when the banks are going to start being willing to lend money again,” he said.

Speculation among traders late in the session that the market’s pullback had been severe enough to force the Federal Reserve into taking other steps to soothe the markets helped stocks rebound from their lows.

“If you can’t say that we’re oversold now I don’t know what you say. You’re at least due for a bounce if nothing else,” said Bill Stone, chief investment strategist for PNC Wealth Management.

The global plunge in stocks was under way well before Wall Street ever woke up. In Japan, the Nikkei average lost more than 4 percent. And then the losses spread across Europe — almost 6 percent for the FTSE-100 in Britain, 7 percent for the German DAX and more than 9 percent for France’s CAC-40.

In the United States, President Bush twice made unscheduled remarks on the economy, saying in Cincinnati that the economy would be “just fine” but that the bailout package needed time to work.

Visible positive effects of the bailout bill may not be seen for some time, Fee said.

“The market is going to be jittery for a little while, and it’s going to take a little while for people to gain confidence,” he said.

The troubles that started with an overheated housing market in the U.S. have infected financial markets around the world, making banks fearful of lending to other banks, let alone to businesses and consumers. That has led to worries that economies around the world might not only sputter but slide into reverse.

The crush of selling Monday came exactly one week after the Dow lost 777 points, its biggest closing loss in terms of points. On that day, the House voted down an earlier bailout package that had appeared to be a safe bet to pass.

The swings in the Dow on Monday also marked the beginning a fourth week of tumult in the markets. Triple-digit Dow swings have been commonplace since mid-September, when investment house Lehman Brothers went bankrupt and the government stepped in to bail out insurer American International Group.

Fee said the continued slide means more bad news for students and recent graduates, who will find it more difficult to obtain student loans and post-graduation jobs.

Staff writer Kelly House contributed to this report.