Dow has biggest single day loss since 2008 Great Recession

The Dow fell Monday by 7.8 percent, its biggest single-day loss since the 2008 Great Recession, amid plummeting oil prices and growing fears about the spreading coronavirus. 

Analysts are raising concerns that the loss, after weeks of market gains and losses since the virus was first detected in China in late 2019, has put the U.S. in or near a recession, as it did 12 years ago. 

An early-morning selloff on the New York Stock Exchange triggered an automatic, 15-minute halt in trading. 

“The market has had a crisis of confidence,” Willie Delwiche, investment strategist at Baird, told the Associated Press.

Beyond investor skittishness over the potential global impact of the virus – which has infected more than 110,000 people worldwide and is being attributed to about 4,000 deaths – economists are expressing major concerns about the disruption of supply chains around the world that are linked to China.