Financial Markets Wall Street

A worldwide sell-off for stocks is slamming onto Wall Street, and oil prices are leaping even higher as worries rise that the war with Iran is widening and may do more sustained damage to the global economy than feared. The S&P 500 dropped 1.8% Tuesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 907 points, and the Nasdaq composite sank 2.1%. It was just a day ago that U.S. stocks opened with sharp losses, only to recover all of them and end the day with slight gains. But that was with the caveat that oil prices did not jump too high.

Worries are particularly high about what will happen to the Strait of Hormuz off the coast of Iran, where roughly a fifth of the world’s oil passes.