NEW YORK — Stocks fell sharply on Monday over continued fears and uncertainty about the coronavirus, as well as a big drop in the price of oil.
The Dow Jones plummeted 7.8 percent, or 2,013 points, its worst fall since 2008.
Just minutes after the opening bell on Monday, a so-called circuit breaker was triggered when the Dow quickly dropped 1,884 points, or 7 percent.
A circuit breaker is a financial regulatory device that prevents stock market crashes from happening.
"You're looking at the confluence of two things. What really got the markets spooked overnight was the drop in the price of oil," said Dave Wentley, a financial advisor with Wentley Investments. "We look like we're going into a little bit of an oil war between Russia and Saudi Arabia. Put that aside, we have this coronavirus is the other one, something that shows no signs of abating. And I think the market is trying to figure out, what should things be valued at when we have these two things coming at us like freight trains?"
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The steep drop on Wall Street followed similar falls in Europe after a fight among major crude-producing countries jolted investors already on edge about the widening fallout from the outbreak of the new coronavirus.
Indexes in London and Frankfurt dropped by more than 7 percent. The benchmark for Italy, where the industrial and financial heartland was put in lockdown, fell 11 percent.
Oil prices are down about 20 percent, deepening a rout that began when Saudi Arabia, Russia and other producers failed to agree on cutting output. Bond yields sank to new lows.
Wentley said the coronavirus, or COVID-19, has more people staying inside and spending less.
"It's going to have an impact on the economy overall," said Wentley. "You think of the people who are not going to movies, not going to restaurants. People have schools closing. You're going to see people pull back their wallets in terms of going to the mall, different stores until this thing started to ebb somewhat. So that's going to have an impact on our economy."
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Wentley is urging everyone to stay calm and keeping investing, especially if you're in your 20s, 30s, 40s, even 50s.
"This is a non-event for you. You should be continuing to invest into your 401(k) plan like clockwork and not thinking about this. This will not have an impact on your overall, down the road," said Wentley. "You only lose when you sell."
Wentley added that if you're in your 60s, you should've already been moving money into safer areas before this instability in the market happened.
"If you're in your 60s and you're looking at retirement in a couple years, you want to start to think, do I really want to be 100 percent invested in the stock market? Should I put some money on the side because I know I'm going to need an income flow for the first year or second year?" said Wentley. "Today's not the day to make that plan. After this settles down, that's when you should take a hard look at how you're investing."
The best advice from Wentley is to not panic, because things will get better.
"We either see it starting to ease somewhat in terms of people coming down with [coronavirus]. It will be something like that that will turn it," said Wentley. "Let the storm blow over, and then go out and assess what you're going to do."
WPTV and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
