Post-Election Day slide continues on Wall Street
BY Staff and Wire Reports
Friday, November 09, 2012
11/09/12 at 4:04 AM
Stocks slid Thursday, a day after the Dow Jones industrial average logged its biggest one-day drop of the year, as investors fretted about the potential for gridlock in Washington.
The Dow closed down 121.41 points at 12,811.32, bringing its two-day loss to 434 points.
The slump came in the wake of President Barack Obama's re-election to a second term as investors turned their focus back to Europe's problems and the so-called fiscal cliff, a package of tax increases and government spending cuts in the U.S. that will occur unless Congress acts by Jan. 1. Investors see it as a serious threat to the economic recovery.
"The thinking before the election was that it would remove some of the uncertainty, but it seems to have done the opposite," said Tyler Vernon at Biltmore Capital Advisors in Princeton, N.J.
Still, the Standard and Poor's 500 index is up 10 percent for the year.
