NEW YORK — Another day of big losses knocked U.S. stocks to their lowest levels in more than a year Monday.
Selling was widespread. Investors dumped high-growth technology and retail companies as well as steadier, high-dividend companies. Hospitals and health insurers slumped after a federal judge in Texas ruled that the 2010 Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 507 points after a 496-point drop Friday, and all the major stock indexes fell at least 2 percent. Oil closed below $50 a barrel for the first time since October 2017. Bonds rose and their yields fell.
Mark Hackett, chief of investment research at Nationwide Investment Management, attributed Monday’s action in stocks to investor concerns about the slowing global economy. But he felt it was overdone. “That is basically retail investors panicking,” he said. “Investors basically are confusing the idea of a slowdown with a recession.”
Investors sold almost everything. Less than 40 of the 500 stocks comprising the S&P 500 finished the day higher. Amazon led a rout among retailers and tech companies including Microsoft turned sharply lower. Some of the largest losses went to utilities and real estate companies, which have done better than the rest of the market during the turbulence of the last three months.
HOTAN, China — Chinese men and women locked in a mass detention camp where authorities are “re-educating” ethnic minorities, forcing them to sew clothes that have been imported all year by a U.S. sportswear company.
The camp, in Hotan, China, is one of a growing number of internment camps in the Xinjiang region, where by some estimates 1 million Muslims are detained, forced to give up their language and religion and subject to political indoctrination. Now, the Chinese government is also forcing some detainees to work in manufacturing and food industries. Some are within the internment camps; others are privately-owned, state-subsidized factories where detainees are sent once they are released.
The Associated Press has tracked recent, ongoing shipments from one such factory — Hetian Taida Apparel — inside an internment camp to Badger Sportswear, a leading supplier in Statesville, North Carolina. Badger’s clothes are sold on college campuses and to sports teams across the country.
The shipments show how difficult it is to stop products made with forced labor from getting into the global supply chain, even though such imports are illegal in the U.S. Badger CEO John Anton said Sunday that the company would halt shipments while it investigates.
From Associated Press