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more at: Bank stocks push Dow below 13,000 - Nov. 7, 2012NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- A sell-off on Wall Street gained momentum Wednesday, with the Dow falling below 13,000 for the first time in two months, as investors focused on how President Obama plans to avoid the fiscal cliff after he won re-election Tuesday night.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 300 points, or 2.3%.
"This is purely a reaction to the political landscape and an investor response to the policies on the table -- all the new regulation that will add to the costs of doing business for certain industries and sectors" said Jack Ablin, chief investment office at Harris Private Bank. "Financials are getting hit the hardest, and energy isn't far behind."
But with the election behind them, investors are quickly moving on and turning to what Tuesday's results mean for the looming fiscal cliff, the market's biggest headwind, according to market strategists and money managers recently surveyed by CNNMoney.
"We have only have 10 legislative days to make something happen," said Ablin. "Obama has said he will reject any proposal that doesn't include tax hikes on the wealthy, so we see the same kind of contention that we saw during the debt ceiling battle that eventually led to a downgrade by Standard and Poor's."
If lawmakers fail to address the simultaneous onset of tax hikes and spending cuts that will be triggered on Jan. 1, they risk throwing the U.S. economy back into a recession and drive unemployment up even higher.
Fitch Rating said Wednesday that Obama needs to "quickly secure agreement on avoiding the fiscal cliff and raising the debt ceiling," and cautioned that failure to do so "would likely result in a rating downgrade in 2013." Fitch has so far maintained its AAA rating for the United States....