Stocks Plunge as Market Enters ‘Correction’ Territory<br />“It’s certainly a change in behavior relative to 2017,<br />but then again, 2017 is an anomalous period with incredibly low volatility in the market, a very smooth glide-path higher.”<br />The long bull market — stocks were up more than 300 percent at their peak in late January — has been underpinned, in part, by the extraordinary efforts<br />of the world’s central bankers to re-energize growth in the aftermath of the American financial crisis and the deep global recession that followed.<br />Major stock indexes suffered a steep drop in late trading on Thursday, the second straight day that stocks plunged shortly before the markets closed.<br />The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index — a measure of the choppiness of markets — surged by 21 percent.<br />“And then suddenly, they’re anxious, they’re sitting nervously on the sidelines, and then they can’t take it anymore.”<br />In addition to the S. & P. 500’s drop on Thursday, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 4.15 percent.<br />Noah Weisberger, a managing director at AB Bernstein, said<br />that over the past few decades, a 10 percent drop would normally happen every 18 months or so.<br />“There was a big empty void on the buy side toward the end of the day,” said Jonathan<br />D. Corpina, a senior managing partner at Meridian Equity Partners, a brokerage firm.<br />The market correction doesn’t mean that the bull market in stocks — which have been roaring since March 2009 — is over.<br />The 3.75 percent decline pushed the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index down more than 10 percent from its peak in late January.
