Wall Street greeted a second Obama term the way it greeted the first. Investors dumped stocks Wednesday in the sharpest sell-off of the year. With the election only hours behind them, they focused on the economic situations ahead in Washington and across the Atlantic Ocean.
Frantic selling recalled the days after Obama’s first victory, as the financial crisis raged and stocks spiraled downward.
Four years later, American voters returned a divided government to power and left investors fretting about a package of tax increases and government spending cuts that could stall the economic recovery unless Congress acts to stop it by Jan. 1.
In Europe, leaders warned that unemployment could remain high for years, and cut their forecasts for economic growth for this year and 2013. The head of the European Central Bank said not even powerhouse Germany is immune.
The Dow Jones industrial average plummeted as much as 369 points, or 2.8 percent, in the first two hours of trading. It recovered steadily in the afternoon, but slid into the close and ended down 313, its biggest point drop since this time last year.
“It does look ugly,” said Robert Pavlik, chief market strategist at Banyan Partners LLC. He said it was hard to untangle the impact of Europe-related selling from nerves about the nation’s fiscal uncertainty.
“It’s a combination of all that, quite honestly,” Pavlik said.
It was the worst day for stocks this year, but not the worst after an election. That distinction belongs to 2008, when Barack Obama was elected at the depths of the financial crisis. The Dow fell 486 points the next day.
This time, energy companies and bank stocks took some of the biggest losses.
The Dow closed down 312.95 points, or 2.4 percent, at 12,932.73 — its first close below 13,000 since Aug. 2.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 33.86 points, or 2.4 percent, to 1,394. That was the broader index’s first close below 1,400 since Aug. 30.
The Nasdaq composite index lost 74.64 points, or 2.5 percent, to 2.937.29.
Big, publicly traded hospital companies soared because of expectations that they will gain business under the health-care law, known as ObamaCare. HCA Holdings leapt 9.4 percent, Tenet Healthcare 9.6 percent, Community Health Systems 6 percent and Universal Health Services 4.3 percent.