Stocks drop 4 percent in rocky week on trade, growth worries

Associated Press

Wall Street capped a turbulent week of trading Friday with the biggest weekly loss since March as traders fret over rising trade tensions between Washington and Beijing and signals of slower economic growth.

The latest wave of selling erased more than 550 points from the Dow Jones Industrial Average, bringing its three-day loss to more than 1,400. For the week, major indexes are down more than 4 percent.

Worries that the testy U.S.-China trade dispute and higher interest rates will slow the economy have made investors uneasy, leading to volatile swings in the market from one day to the next.

On Monday, news that the U.S. and China had agreed to a 90-day truce in their escalating trade conflict drove stocks sharply higher, adding to strong gains the week before. The next day, as doubts mounted over the likelihood of a swift resolution to the trade dispute, stocks sank.

That sell-off extended to Thursday, when U.S. stock markets reopened for trading after a national day of mourning for former President George H.W. Bush. An early plunge knocked 700 points off the Dow as investors worried the arrest of a senior Chinese technology company official would undermine trade negotiations between Washington and Beijing, but stocks bounced nearly all the way back by the end of the day on news that the Federal Reserve was considering a wait-and-see approach to its interest rate hikes.

That optimism fueled a rally early Friday, which faded into another sharp drop.