Wall Street drops sharply one day after giant rally
The major U.S. stock indexes veered sharply lower by the end of Tuesday trading after spending much of the day mostly in positive territory. Of the three main benchmarks, Nasdaq turned down first, and eventually the Dow Jones industrials and S&P 500 tumbled as well. Wall Street was coming off its best day in more than two years following last week's steep slide.
Technology stocks and retailers did the most to pull the market lower on Tuesday.
After leaping more than 660 points on Monday, the Dow industrials ended down by 344 points, or 1.4 percent. Nasdaq took the day's heaviest drop, with a 2.9 percent tumble, or 212 points. The S&P 500's fall of 46 points was a 1.7 percent slide.
Shares in Twitter (TWTR) slumped 12 percent after Citron Research said it's shorting (betting the shares will fall) the social media portal, citing Twitter's reliance on licensing its users' data. The remarks come ahead of a Senate hearing on data privacy set for next month.
Facebook (FB), whose shares have been hard hit recently amid heightened government scrutiny into the social media giant's collection of private user data, also declined, sliding another 5 percent. Facebook has lost 20 percent of its value since hitting a record high Feb. 1.
Tesla (TSLA) fell 8.2 percent on news that the National Transportation Safety Board has sent two investigators to look into a fatal crash and fire Friday in California that involved a Tesla electric SUV. The agency said on Twitter that it's not clear whether the Tesla Model X was operating on its semi-autonomous control system called Autopilot at the time.
The Conference Board said its consumer confidence index slipped to 127.7 this month, down from 130 in February, which was the highest reading since November 2000. The business research group's index measures consumers' assessment of current conditions and their outlook for the next six months.
Separately, the latest Standard & Poor's CoreLogic Case-Shiller national home price index shows prices jumped 6.2 percent in January from a year earlier, pushed higher by a persistent shortage of homes for sale.