Stock markets suffered another major drop Thursday, bringing total valuations down near the level that would be considered a market “correction.”
The Dow Jones industrial average fell by more than 1,000 points on the day, or more than 4 percent.
Markets have seen very high volatility over the past week, with Thursday’s sell-off the third major drop in the past five trading days.
Altogether, the Dow is down by over 10 percent from the all-time high it hit in January. Investors typically refer to a decrease of that size as a correction.
The S&P 500 also is down slightly less than 10 percent from its all-time highs.
Several major tech companies, including Apple, Amazon, and Facebook, saw shares slide Thursday.
The past week’s market turbulence began Friday after the January jobs report showed wages growing at the fastest pace of the recovery, raising fears among some investors that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates faster in order to prevent inflation from rising out of control.
The Trump administration continued to downplay the severity of the market fluctuations.
Rather than day-to-day market movements, White House spokesman Raj Shah said, the president is “concerned about long term economic indicators and factors. And the fundamentals, in terms of the long term, are very strong.”
The Department of Labor reported earlier Thursday morning that claims for unemployment benefits are running at the lowest levels in nearly 45 years.
