Dow closes below 6,800 for the first time since '97
Investor worries about the economy in general, and financial companies in particular, continued to erode the markets on Monday as the Dow Jones industrial average fell below 6,800 points for first time since October 1997.
"It's pretty despondent everywhere," said Dwyfor Evans, a strategist at State Street Global Markets in Hong Kong. "O.K., there are signs that some of the leading indicators have stabilized to some extent, but it's at a very, very low level, and we're not seeing corporate investment picking up, or consumers starting to spend again — in other words, the traditional mechanisms by which economies come out of a recession are absent at this time."
At the close, the Dow was down 299.64 points, or 4.2 percent, to 6,763.29 points. The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index declined 34.27 points or 4.6 percent, but remained just above 700. The Nasdaq fell 3.9 percent....