Stocks close with steep losses as coronavirus crash threatens ‘Trump bump’

Stocks closed Wednesday with steep losses as the Dow Jones Industrial Average nearly gave up the entirety of its historic rally that followed President Trump’s January 2017 inauguration.

The Dow fell 6.3 percent by the end of Wednesday trading, losing 1,335 points and falling to 19,902. The Dow lingered below 19827.25 points, its closing level on Jan. 20, 2017, frequently throughout Wednesday but rallied to protect what remains of the index’s “Trump bump.”

The S&P 500 index with a loss of 5.2 percent Wednesday after also threatening to fall beneath its closing level on Trump’s inauguration. The index’s current level of 2,398 is just more than 120 points above its close at 2,271 points on Jan. 20, 2017.

The Nasdaq composite lost 4.7 percent Wednesday, falling to 6,989 points — still well above its close of 5,555 points on Trump’s inauguration.

The stock market has crashed from record highs set in mid-February as the coronavirus pandemic and the social distancing measures adopted to mitigate it derail the U.S. economy. Each of the three major stock indexes has fallen more than 20 percent after a record-shattering rally that began shortly after Trump took office. 

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