Never mind finding coal in your stocking for the holidays. Wall Street investors scored a rare — and unwanted — gift this year.

The S&P 500 index SPX, -2.71% fell by 2.7% Monday, marking the first Christmas Eve that the broad-market benchmark has booked a loss of 1% or greater — ever.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -2.91% also marked its worst drop on the ever of Christmas, finishing 653 points, or 2.9%, representing its worst such decline in history.

Bespoke Investment Group spotlighted this dubious S&P 500 record earlier in the day:

That statistic has been confirmed by Dow Jones Market Data, which said the largest decline in the index on the trading day before Christmas was Dec. 23 in 1933.

The following graphic from Bespoke illustrates the index’s moves over the past 90 years or so:

For the Dow, it would be the first time it has fallen by more than 1% in about 100 years and the steepest drop on Christmas eve in the 122-year-old blue-chip gauge’s history : Check out the table below from Dow Jones Market Data:

It wasn’t pretty for the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, -2.21% either, with the technology and internet-laden benchmark logging an ugly 2.2% loss. That also marks the worst Christmas eve drop for the Nasdaq its history, with the worst drop a 0.95% in 1973. The Nasdaq began trading on Feb. 8, 1971.

U.S. stock indexes ended trading at 1 p.m. Eastern Time on Christmas Eve and will be closed on Christmas.

Read: Mnuchin thinks there’s a simple reason the Dow is poised for its worst December since 1931

Read: Which stock and bond markets close, and when, for Christmas and New Year’s holidays

The current dynamic in the market has it set for its worst monthly and yearly decline about a decade, amid nagging concerns that the Federal Reserve is normalizing interest rates too rapidly, and that a continuing tariff dispute between China and the U.S. could devolve and help lead to a domestic recession, as international economies are already demonstrating signs of a slowdown.

Also stoking anxiety was a tweet from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to assess the health of the banking system, which has raised some questions about liquidity among those institutions that had not previously been raised. Treasury officials insist that the calls to bank executives was just a routine checkup.

Read: Opinion: Mnuchin can’t stand up to his boss — and it’s costing you money

Providing critical information for the U.S. trading day. Subscribe to MarketWatch's free Need to Know newsletter. Sign up here. </s> Not even the truncated Christmas Eve session could halt the market rout that's gripped investors for three months.

The S&P 500 plunged almost three per cent to end at a 20-month low, in what was the worst final session before the Christmas holiday on record, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It was the busiest Christmas Eve since 2010, with more than 1.7 billion shares changing hands in the truncated session.

"The more volatile things get the more volume surges," Michael Antonelli, equity sales trader at Robert W Baird, said. "People don't care it's a session before Christmas when the US equity market is acting like this."

The S&P 500 fell 2.7 per cent and the Dow Jones Industrial Average sank 653 points, deepening losses after the worst week since 2011. </s> Dow Suffers Record-Breaking Christmas Eve Losses

Enlarge this image toggle caption Patrick Sison/AP Patrick Sison/AP

Updated at 6:40 a.m. ET

The stock market was only open for half a day Monday, and that was more than enough time for the Dow Jones Industrial Average to drop 2.9 percent to 21,792.20, breaking 1918's record for the worst Christmas Eve performance.

Other U.S. indexes fell too. The Nasdaq lost 2.2 percent to 6,192.92. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 2.7 percent to 2,351.10.

U.S. stocks are on track for their worst year since 2008, which was during the Great Recession, and their worst December since 1931, which was during the Great Depression.

The markets have been dealing with concerns of a slowing global economy, the trade dispute with China and last week's interest rate increase — the fourth by the Federal Reserve this year.

Over the weekend, reports surfaced that President Trump was asking advisers if he could legally fire Fed Chairman Jerome Powell. Trump nominated Powell last year to take over the Fed, but since interest rates began rising, Trump has upped his rhetoric against Powell.

Efforts by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin on Sunday to reassure investors backfired. He tweeted that he had spoken with the heads of the nation's six largest banks and was assured that they had sufficient lending capacity.

"We've gone through situations before where it's absolutely normal for the secretary of Treasury to reach out to the private sector," Quincy Krosby, a chief market strategist at Prudential Financial, told The Wall Street Journal.

"But what's bad is this made the papers, and says the government is very worried," Krosby told the paper, adding that with investors focused on so many issues, "it's almost as if gravity is pulling this market toward a lower level before it bottoms out."

Monday morning's drop in U.S. financial markets began after Trump tweeted about the Fed.

"The only problem our economy has is the Fed," the president said on Twitter. "They don't have a feel for the Market, they don't understand necessary Trade Wars or Strong Dollars or even Democrat Shutdowns over Borders. The Fed is like a powerful golfer who can't score because he has no touch - he can't putt!"

The Fed is an independent agency. While board members are nominated by the president, they make decisions separately from the White House.

Peter Conti-Brown, a financial historian at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, told The Associated Press: "We've never seen anything like this full-blown and full-frontal assault. This is a disaster for the Fed, a disaster for the president and a disaster for the economy."

After Monday's Wall Street losses, Asian markets followed. Japan's Nikkei 225 fell by 5 percent to end the day at 19,155.14 points. The Shanghai Composite Index ended 0.9 percent lower to 2,504.82. Benchmarks in Thailand and Taiwan also declined.

Markets in Europe, Hong Kong, Australia and South Korea were closed for Christmas.

After a pause in trading for the holiday, U.S. markets reopen Wednesday. </s> The Dow Jones Industrial average dropped 650 points following President Donald Trump's renewed attack on the Federal Reserve chair – making it the worst Christmas Eve on record for the market index.

The markets closed down hours after Trump attacked the central bank by comparing it to a golfer who is unable to nail a successful put.

The S&P 500 index is now down 20 per cent from its high for the year, marking the beginning of what is considered a bear market.

The president hit at the Fed on Twitter Monday morning, in the wake of an early 400-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average that followed Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin's plan to convene a call with his 'plunge protection team' – a move that appeared to stoke further concerns.

By the time the closing bell rang at 1 pm for the holiday, the Dow had dropped 601 points and dipped below 22,000. It was the worst Christmas Eve ever for the Dow, CNBC reported. It ended up down 653 points on the day.

Trump tweeted Monday: 'The only problem our economy has is the Fed. They don't have a feel for the Market, they don't understand necessary Trade Wars or Strong Dollars or even Democrat Shutdowns over Borders. The Fed is like a powerful golfer who can't score because he has no touch - he can't putt!'

Trump's tweet featured other significant factors that may in fact be causing a drag on the market. The ongoing trade war with China and a threatened escalation of retaliatory tariffs has been among the sources of anxiety in the markets, according to financial analysts.

The shutdown of a significant portion of the federal government – with no end in site and a possible closure running through the New Year – has contributed to uncertainty.

Trump made his golf reference from inside the White House late Monday morning – having skipped out on his planned Mar-a-Lago vacation where golf was a certainty on his agenda. First Lady Melania Trump is returning to Washington for Christmas.

It followed Mnuchin's announced plan to convene a call with his 'plunge protection team' failed to reassure markets – after the Dow Jones Industrial Average experienced an immediate 400-point drop Monday morning and other indexes fell.

The broader S&P 500 index was down 1.5 per cent in the first five minutes of trading Monday, when markets were set to close at 1 pm for Christmas Eve.

Within minutes of the opening bell, the Dow was down nearly 2 per cent.

Mnuchin on Monday was convening the Working Group on Financial Markets, known as the 'plunge protection team' via conference call.

The group, which includes the Fed board of governors, the head of the SEC, and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, also convened during the 2009 financial crisis – although Mnuchin provided weekend assurances that the U.S. maintains 'strong economic growth.'

Trump's Treasury chief will have to phone in long distance, as on Sunday he was revealed to be vacationing with wife Louise Linton in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico – although his boss President Trump was holed up in Washington with is wife down at Mar-a-Lago during a partial government shutdown.

Trump's attack on the Federal Reserve followed a move by its open markets committee last week to increase a key interest rate that contributed to the market slide.

Oddly enough, Trump's attack on the Fed mirrored criticism of his own golf game, albeit from some of the best to play the game.

'He's not really good around the greens. I could help him if he asked me,' golf legend Tom Watson, who has played with multiple presidents including Trump told CNBC.

Gary Player also critiqued Trump's short game, though his drives have impressed analysts. 'The same thing applies to all the presidents I have played with. When they have a 4-foot putt, they just say pick it up – and you aren't going to argue with them,' Player said.

His efforts to reassure markets are countering multiple other factors that have markets on edge. Among theme are interest rate hikes, the trade war with China, the government shutdown amid a standoff over Trump's border wall, and chaos in the White House amid the the Mueller probe and the coming Democratic House takeover.

'Today I convened individual calls with the CEOs of the nation's six largest banks,' Mnuchin said in a statement he released on Twitter Sunday.

'We continue to see strong economic growth in the U.S. economy with robust activity from consumers and business,' he noted. During the calls, 'the CEOs confirmed that they have ample liquidity available for lending,' the Treasury said.

Mnuchin 'also confirmed that they have not experienced any clearance or margin issues and that the markets continue to function properly,' the Treasury said.

The execs that Mnuchin – a former Goldman Sachs exec who is worth an estimated $300 million – dialed were the chiefs of Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo.

However the Treasury Department had no concerns about liquidity when Mnuchin made the calls to bank CEOs, CNBC reported. Instead, the calls were a 'check-in' about Powell, which raises the possibility that the outreach that drove down the markets was precipitated by Trump's fury at the Fed chair.

Markets experienced their worst December since the Great Depression, and the year's gains have been wiped out since October.

Trump has periodically railed against Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, but that did not prevent a Fed committee from raising the government's key borrowing rate by 0.25 per cent last week.

But acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said on SundayTrump 'now realizes' he can't fire the head of the Federal Reserve, after reports that the president asked his advisers whether he could do so.

'I think [Trump] put out a tweet last night specifically saying that he now realizes he does not have the ability to fire him,' Mulvaney said ABC's 'This Week' on Sunday.

ABC's Jonathan Karl pointed out it wasn't Trump who tweeted that but Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

'Is that who tweeted? All right,' Mulvaney said. 'I talked to - I must have heard it - I did speak with the treasury secretary last night about a bunch of things, including the lapse in appropriations and the shutdown, and he did mention that to me.'

CNN and Bloomberg, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, said that Trump was furious when the Fed raised the key borrowing rate on Wednesday and signaled it will continue to hike rates next year.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed the week with yet another steep decline, its worst week in 10 years.

The S&P 500 index is on track for its worst December percentage drop since the Depression. </s> The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 1,175 points by the closing bell on Monday afternoon, erasing its gain for the year, as the market extended a slump that began on Friday.

Stocks took their worst loss in six and a half years and ended a period of record-setting calm for stocks.

Earlier in the day, the Dow briefly plunged nearly 1,600 points, before recouping half that loss within minutes, but its gains for the year were still gone.

The dramatic drop on Monday at one point brought the Dow below 24,000 points. The trading day ended with Dow at 24,345 point, down 4.6 per cent.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index, the benchmark most professional investors and many index funds use, skidded 113.19 points, or 4.1 per cent, to 2,648.94. That was its biggest loss since August 2011, when investors were fearful about European government debt and the US came close to breaching its debt ceiling.

The Nasdaq composite fell 273.42 points, or 3.8 per cent, to 6,967.53. The Russell 2000 index of smaller-company stocks sank 56.18 points, or 3.6 per cent, for 1,491.09.

The market’s slump began on Friday as investors worried that creeping signs of higher inflation and interest rates could derail the market’s record-setting rally.

'When you have rates moving upwards, typically what happens is that financial conditions tighten, things like bank lending, mortgage lending start to slow and then the economy is at risk of a potential downturn,' said Mona Mahajan, investment strategist with Allianz Global Investors in New York.

The Dow plunged more than 660 points by the time it closed on Friday afternoon.

This fall marked the stock market's worst week in two years.

The last time the index shed this many points in a single day was on August 8, 2011.

As Dow continued sliding, President Donald Trump was in Ohio on Monday praising his recently-passed tax overhaul law and telling workers at a factory near Cincinnati that 'America is once again open for business.'

Trump said the tax cuts are at the center of improving economic conditions.

The stock market has been unusually calm for more than a year. The combination of economic growth in the US and other major economies, low interest rates, and support from central banks meant stocks could keep rising steadily without a lot of bumps along the way. Experts have been warning that that wouldn’t last forever.

David Kelly, the chief global strategist for JPMorgan Asset Management, said the signs of inflation and rising rates are not as bad as they looked, but after the market’s big gains in 2017 and early 2018, stocks were overdue for a drop.

'It’s like a kid at a child’s party who, after an afternoon of cake and ice cream, eats one more cookie and that puts them over the edge,' he said. </s> (Bloomberg) -- Not even the truncated Christmas Eve session could halt the market rout that’s gripped investors for three months.

The S&P 500 plunged to a 19-month low amid a torrent of trading before the holiday. Some 630 million shares changed hands before 10:45 a.m. in New York, compared with the average of 300 million shares over the nine previous pre-Christmas sessions. Trading in S&P 500 shares was 38 percent above the 30-day average at this time of day and almost 60 percent higher than the 100-day mean.

“The more volatile things get the more volume surges,” Michael Antonelli, equity sales trader at Robert W. Baird, said in an email. “People don’t care it’s a session before Christmas when the U.S. equity market is acting like this.”

The S&P 500 fell more than 1.5 percent Monday, the biggest loss during pre-Christmas session since at least 2000, deepening losses after the index’s worst week since 2011. Traders reacted to news over the weekend that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin called top executives from the six largest U.S. banks to discuss liquidity and a Bloomberg News report that President Donald Trump inquired about firing the central-bank chairman, adding to slew of concerns about global growth, a trade war with China, political gridlock in Washington and Fed rate hikes.

Equity markets close at 1 p.m. in New York.

The usual lull of the pre-Christmas holiday trading was nowhere to be found on Monday as all 11 sectors in the S&P 500 declined. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell another 1.6 percent after the worst week in a decade and small-caps declined for the eighth straight day.

A volatility spike on Monday resembled trading activity on Friday when volume in New York Stock Exchange shares going down exceeded those rising by the second-highest margin on record.

To contact the reporter on this story: Elena Popina in New York at epopina@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Courtney Dentch at cdentch1@bloomberg.net, Randall Jensen, Jeremy Herron

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com </s> How the Dow Jones industrial average fared on Tuesday

U.S. stocks abruptly changed course again Tuesday and took large losses. Investors worried about the possibility of a weaker global economy and tried to anticipate the Federal Reserve's plans for interest rates. Energy companies fell with the price of oil after a leading industry group said demand for oil is down more than it previously thought.

The Dow Jones industrial average tumbled 258.32 points, or 1.4 percent, to 18,066.75.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index dropped 32.02 points, or 1.5 percent, to 2,127.02.

The Nasdaq composite shed 56.63 points, or 1.1 percent, to 5,155.25.

The Dow is down 18.70 points, or 0.1 percent.

The S&P 500 is down 0.79 points, or 0.04 percent.

The Nasdaq is up 29.35 points, or 0.6 percent.

The Dow is up 641.72 points, or 3.7 percent.

The S&P 500 is up 83.08 points, or 4.1 percent.

The Nasdaq is up 147.84 points, or 3 percent. </s> The Dow Jones Industrial Average soared to a record closing high on Tuesday, breaking through levels last seen in 2007 and as investors rushed in to join the party in anticipation of more gains.

Based on the latest available data, the Dow Jones industrial average shot up 126.18 points, or 0.89 percent, to end unofficially at 14,253.92. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index rose 14.60 points, or 0.96 percent, to finish unofficially at 1,539.80. The Nasdaq Composite Index was jumped 42.10 points, or 1.32 percent, to close unofficially at 3,224.13. </s> The vicious sell-off continues with the Dow Jones index plunging as Wall Street starts worrying its post-Trump party could be over.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has plunged by 1,175 points, its biggest single-day drop in history.

When last Friday's results are included, the blue-chip index has plunged by more than 1,800 points in two days — erasing all its 2018 gains.

The US market wipe-out was sparked by a fast rise in interest rates, with US 10-year bond yields reaching a four-year high.

The sell-off extended to the broader S&P 500 which fell by 113 points (or 4.1 per cent) to 2.649.

As for the tech-heavy Nasdaq, it fell 3.8 per cent to 6,968.

Every S&P sector was smashed, with financials (-4.7pc), healthcare (-4.6pc), industrials (-4.5pc) and energy (-4.3pc) being the worst performers.

The sectors with the least losses were utilities and consumer cyclicals, which dropped 1.7 and 3.3 per cent respectively.

Energy stocks like Exxon Mobil tumbled after oil prices fell sharply overnight — with Brent crude down to $US67.50 a barrel

The big banks Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America have dropped by up to 2.5 per cent each.

But it was Wells Fargo which fell the hardest — falling by 9.2 per cent, making it the weakest of the 500 stocks in the S&P index.

This was after the Federal Reserve forced Wells Fargo to replace four directors. In addition, the Fed is restricting the bank from getting any larger or richer until its "widespread consumer abuses" are addressed.

With ASX futures down by 45 points, the Australian market is expected to fall.

Today is also a big day for local economic news.

The Reserve Bank board will meet today, and most likely keep interest rates on hold at the record low 1.5 per cent.

Also, the Bureau of Statistics will release its latest retail and international trade figures.

The Australian dollar is continuing to feel some pressure, and has fallen to 78.8 US cents.

However, the local currency held its ground at 56.4 British pence and 63.7 Euro cents.

More to come.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average drops 2.9%, its worst performance ever on Christmas Eve.