Dow plummets 519 points
NEW YORK — Back to reality and back down, Wall Street focused Wednesday on the bleak landscape ahead for the economy and wiped out its big gains from a day earlier — and then some.
The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 519 points and has now lost more than 2,000 in less than three weeks. Swings of several hundred points in just minutes have become commonplace.
This time, the selling was intensified by worries about debt problems in Europe.
On Tuesday, the Federal Reserve said it planned to keep interest rates ultra-low for two more years. After some initial confusion, the stock market staged a huge comeback and had one of its best days.
But the interest-rate news proved to be a distraction. The Fed made the pledge because it sees almost no chance that the economy will improve substantially by 2013, and when investors focused on that, they dumped stocks again.
"Now it gets back to the fundamentals," said Mark Lamkin, founder of Lamkin Wealth Management, which manages $215 million.
The Dow closed at 10,719.94, down 4.6 percent for the day. By points, it was the ninth-steepest decline for the market.
Wednesday was another day marked by big moves. The Dow was down more than 300 points within minutes of the opening bell. It recovered some of that loss, then drifted steadily lower in the last two hours.
The market has traded that way for two weeks, lurching up and down. The most extreme example was Tuesday, when the Dow swung more than 600 points in one hour and 45 minutes.
