Wall Street sinks with oil; Nasdaq at lowest since August

By Abhiram Nandakumar

REUTERS - Wall Street sank on Friday morning, with the Nasdaq hitting its lowest since Aug. 24 and the Dow briefly dropping below 16,000, as oil prices dived to less than $30 per barrel.

The S&P 500 and the Dow hit their lowest since Sept. 29 amid a broad selloff. All 10 major S&P sectors in the red and all 30 Dow components lower. The beaten-down energy sector's 3.21 percent slide led the declines.

Brent crude prices, which have fallen 20 percent this year, were down nearly 5 percent as the market braced for oil from Iran to flood an already oversupplied market.

Dow components Exxon and Chevron were down 2.5-4 percent, while Caterpillar dropped nearly 3 percent. Intel tumbled 8 percent after its results.

World stocks were set for a third straight week of losses amid the selloff in oil prices and concerns about a China-led slowdown in global growth.

"When we started off the year, we were at the crossroads of concern and optimism and clearly, we've gone down the road of concern pretty quickly," said Dan Farley, regional investment strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management in Minneapolis.

U.S. economic data on Friday was also not very encouraging.

U.S. retail sales unexpectedly fell 0.1 percent in December, while industrial output declined for the third straight month in December, underscoring a worsening outlook for fourth-quarter economic growth.

New York Fed President William Dudley, a voting member of the rate-setting FOMC, said while the central bank was looking at negative interest rates as a potential policy tool, it was not seriously being considered right now.

At 10:29 a.m. ET (1529 GMT), the Dow Jones industrial average was down 357.82 points, or 2.18 percent, at 16,021.23

The S&P 500 was down 38.49 points, or 2 percent, at 1,883.35.

The Nasdaq Composite index was down 113.87 points, or 2.47 percent, at 4,501.13.

It hit a low of 4,463.458, the lowest since the market plunged on Aug. 24 when China devalued the yuan to try and arrest the selloff in its stock markets.

The selloff pushed the Russell 2000 index down 2.5 percent to 997.1815, its lowest since July 2013.

Apple was down 2.5 percent and was the biggest drag on the S&P and the Nasdaq, while Goldman Sachs' 2.8 percent fall weighed the most on the Dow.

Citigroup was down 5 percent at $43.03, while Wells Fargo fell 2.8 percent to $49.26, after reporting largely in-line quarterly earnings.

Intel's results and forecast raised concerns about the chipmaker's growth and weighed on the chip index, which fell 3.9 percent, its steepest drop since March.

Wynn Resorts was the among the very few bright spots, rising 5.6 percent to $54.26 after the casino operator surprised the market with a preliminary report of quarterly revenue in line with estimates.

Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by 2,762 to 246. On the Nasdaq, 2,380 issues fell and 259 advanced.

The S&P 500 index showed no new 52-week highs and 107 new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded three new highs and 326 lows.

(Reporting by Abhiram Nandakumar in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D'Souza)