By JOSHUA FREED
By JOSHUA FREED
Associated Press
Stocks suffered their biggest losses in three months Tuesday, the first hiccup in a strong and steady rally to start the year. Wall Street worried about the global economy and waited while Greece pressured the last investors to sign on for its bailout.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 200 points, giving up more than a quarter of its 745-point advance since Jan. 1, the best start to a year in the U.S. market since 1998.
The sell-off, which spread west from Europe, also interrupted a period of unusual calm on Wall Street. Before Tuesday, the Dow had not fallen 100 points for 45 straight trading sessions, the longest streak since 2006.
The decline of 203.66 points was the worst for the Dow since Nov. 23 and left the average at 12,759.15. It was only last week that the Dow closed above 13,000 for the first time since May 2008, four months before the worst of the financial crisis.
“When things go straight up and don’t ever correct or have some sort of normal pullback, as an investor, that makes me nervous,” said Ed Hyland, a global investment specialist with J.P. Morgan Private Bank.
The gradual rally had been powered by optimism about the U.S. economic recovery. But investors realized that Greece’s debt problems, Europe’s economic problems and Israel’s Iran problems were still very much their problems, too.
Stocks fell sharply from the opening bell and never mounted a serious comeback. The Dow was down as much as 227 points. All but one of the 30 stocks in the average finished the day lower. Intel managed a gain of 7 cents.
All 10 industry groups in the Standard & Poor’s 500 declined. Bank stocks, which typically take a hit when there is any reason to worry about Greece, led the declines, followed by industrial companies.