US stocks declined broadly on Tuesday as China's devaluation of its yuan currency hit companies with a big exposure to the world's No 2 economy and added to worries about the global economic outlook.
Apple Inc
Among other companies with big exposure to China, Caterpillar
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 212.33 points, or 1.21%, to 17,402.84; the S&P 500 index lost 20.11 points, or 0.96%, to 2,084.07 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 65.01 points, or 1.27%, to 5,036.79.
"Obviously, this devaluation seems to suggest there's a lot of weakness, and we're in thinly-traded markets right now," said Eric Kuby, chief investment officer at North Star Investment Management Corp in Chicago.
Also Read
"To a certain extent, the stocks that have propped up the market this year have slowly fallen out of favour, so I think that you're seeing a little bit of a flight to safety."
The sudden currency adjustment by the world's top metals consumer pushed copper and aluminium to six-year lows, and the S&P materials index dropped 1.9%, leading S&P 500 sector declines. Freeport-McMoRan
Crude oil futures in New York ended at a more than six-year low.
Meanwhile, US Treasury debt prices jumped following the devaluation news.
China's yuan currency fell to its lowest against the dollar in three years following what the country's central bank described as a "one-off depreciation."
Shares of Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba
The day's stock market declines followed a rally on Monday that gave the S&P 500 its biggest increase since May.
Among the day's gainers, Google
After the bell, shares of General Electric
Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by 1,932 to 1,152, for a 1.68-to-1 ratio; on the Nasdaq, 1,967 issues fell and 848 advanced, for a 2.32-to-1 ratio favouring decliners.
The S&P 500 posted 10 new 52-week highs and 17 new lows; the Nasdaq recorded 40 new highs and 104 new lows.
About 7.1 billion shares changed hands on US exchanges, compared with the 6.9 billion daily average for the month to date, according to data from BATS Global Markets.