Dow drops 500 points and wipes out 2018 gains

Experts said the slide was linked to sustained global trade war fears and Brexit concerns

Traders in New York saw the Dow shed more than 550 points on Tuesday (Getty Images)

The Dow Jones Industrial Average index fell 551 points on Tuesday, after shares in retailer Target dropped 10.8 per cent and tech stocks continued to decline.

The Dow’s 2 per cent decline means it has wiped out all gains made in the year so far.

Experts said the slide was linked to sustained global trade war fears and Brexit concerns, as well as the rout in global tech stocks over recent days.

“It’s a fundamentally driven correction,” Mandy Xu, chief equity derivatives strategist at Credit Suisse, said on Bloomberg Television.

“People are very concerned about earnings outlooks, not just in tech but broader across all sectors. And as a result, we’re probably not going to get a v-shaped recovery. People are going to probably wait until next quarter’s earnings to see if growth is holding up.”

Technology companies have been hit by the administration of Donald Trump proposing new national security regulations that could limit exports of high-tech products in fields such as quantum computing, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

By the close, the Dow sank 551.80 points, or 2.2 per cent, to 24,465.64.

The Dow has lost 3.7 per cent in the last two days and the S&P 500 is down 3.4 per cent. The Nasdaq, heavily populated with technology stocks, is off 4.7 per cent.

Connor Campbell, financial analyst at Spreadex, said the Dow Jones was “a bloody mess soon after the bell rang” on Tuesday.

He noted that tech investors are growing increasingly worried about the implications of a US-China trade battle.

Associated Press contributed to this report