Dow, S&P 500 Slide More Than 3% as Investors Reassess Fed Comments

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The stock market took its biggest U-turn since the early days of the pandemic Thursday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average posting its largest decline this year just 24 hours after its largest gain since 2020. 

The reversal wiped out the euphoria that reigned on Wall Street Wednesday in the wake of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s comment that the Fed wasn’t “actively considering” raising interest rates by 0.75 percentage point at a future meeting. With inflation at its highest level since the early 1980s, markets had been anticipating such an increase and the prospect of a slower rise in rates set off a furious buying spree in the late afternoon.