Stocks just got crushed in the past half hour. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which started the week above 11,000, dropped almost a thousand points in midafternoon trading Thursday to below 10,000. That’s the first time it has dropped below 10,000 since Feb. 12.
At 2:51 it was back above 10,000 at 10,354, down 521.
The plunge comes as spreading turmoil in Europe “makes people try to figure out what the problems in Europe mean to other economies,” one observer says. “People used to thinking in absolutes are suddenly forced to think on a relative basis.”
In one sign of the flight from risk, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note tumbled to 3.4%. It was as high as 4% just a month ago, before the Greek problems expanded to Portugal and other financially strapped European nations.