Wall Street hits the skids, Nasdaq drops more than 350 points

Lola Evans
28 Jan 2021, 07:16 GMT+10

The Nasdaq Composite tumbled 355.47 points or 2.61 per cent to 13,270.60.
The Standard and Poor's 500 shed 98.85 points or 2.57 percent to 3,750.77.
The Dow Jones index plummeted 633.87 points or 2.05 percent to close at 30,303.17.

NEW YORK, New York - Covering for short-selling saw some shares jump sharply on American stock exchanges on Wednesday, but overall the major indices tumbled.

"As weird as that may sound, what is partially responsible for what's going on today in the market is that there's a lot of selling going on to raise cash to cover some of these big shorts that are just getting pummeled," Sean O'Hara, president of Pacer ETF Distributors in Malvern, Pennsylvania told the Reuters Thomson news agency Wednesday.

The Dow Jones index plummeted 633.87 points or 2.05 percent to close at 30,303.17 - and it was the least damaged of the three major indices on Wednesday.

The Nasdaq Composite tumbled 355.47 points or 2.61 per cent to 13,270.60.

The Standard and Poor's 500 shed 98.85 points or 2.57 percent to 3,750.77.

The U.S. dollar rose as stocks fell. The euro dropped back to 1.2105 by the New York close Wednesday. The British pound dropped to 1.3678.. The Japanese yen weakened to 104.15, while the Swiss franc eased to 0.8889.

The Canadian dollar fell sharply to 1.2811. The Australian dollar was shunned at 0.7650, while the New Zealand dollar fell to .7151.

On overseas equity markets, the FTSE 100 in London slid 1.30 percent. The German Dax dropped 1.81 percent. The Paris-based CAC 40 saw off 1.16 percent.

On Asian markets, the Nikkei 225 fell behind 89.03 points or 0.31 percent to 28,635.21.

The Australian All Ordinaries was down 51.20 points or 0.72 percent at 7,060.20.

China's Shanghai Composite advanced 3.91 points or 0.11 percent to 3,573.34.

In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng shed 93.73 points or 0.32 percent to 29,297.53.

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