Dow Ends Down 173 After Huge Drop Earlier

You know it's a bad day on Wall Street when the Dow closes down 173 points, and that's seen as relatively good news. The reason is that it was down more than 460 points shortly before 2pm before rebounding in the final two hours, reports TheStreet. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq also were down more than 2% each at one point, but they, too, trimmed losses significantly. The latter ended up down just 12 points, while the S&P dipped 16.

So what happened to spook investors?

• MarketWatch: "Interconnected worries over deflation, a potential rerun of the eurozone debt crisis and some surprisingly rotten US economic data."
• Wall Street Journal: Today's selling "marked an acceleration of the recent selloff sparked by fears of a global economic slowdown, dangerously low inflation in Europe and ripples from a steep drop in oil prices." Weak US consumer spending didn't help, nor did "hedge funds frantically looking to exit money-losing investments."

(More Dow Jones stories.)