It’s been a particularly bad start to the first full week of 2015 on Wall Street, at the major indexes were pummeled Monday in the wake of further drops in oil prices.
The Dow Jones Average was down 331 points—nearly a full 2 percent—as oil continued its freefall, falling more than 5% and ending the day below the $50 per barrel benchmark set by many experts. Major producers such as Exxon Mobil and Chevron saw their stock prices fall with the price of crude oil.
The Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) Volatility Index, a measure of investor uncertainty, was up nearly 20 percent.
Even positive reports from U.S. automakers weren’t enough to help stocks recover, as the major indexes went into the later part of the afternoon hoping to stop the bleeding.
Here are the Monday numbers on Wall Street:
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 17,501.65 (-331.34)
NASDAQ: 4,652.57 (-74.24)
S&P 500: 2,020.58 (-37.62)
