Market issues:A steep sell-off in stocks got a little less bad by the end of the day, but it still left indexes down sharply for the second day in a row, the Associated Press reports. Banks and technology shares fell sharply Monday. Facebook sank 4 percent and Amazon, which more than doubled last year, lost 3 percent. The losses brought the Nasdaq composite index down almost 20 percent from its record high last year. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 177, or 1.1 percent, to 16,027. It was down as much as 401 earlier.The Standard & Poor’s 500 lost 26 points, or 1.4 percent, to 1,853. The Nasdaq sank 79 points, or 1.8 percent, to 4,283.Gold jumped 4 percent, and bond prices rose. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 1.75 percent.
Inspections: The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced today it has begun a special inspection at the River Bend Station nuclear power plant in St. Francisville. The NRC will review events surrounding an unplanned reactor shutdown Jan. 9, the commission says in a news release. According to the NRC, the Entergy-owned plant was operating at full power when lightning struck it last month, causing a momentary surge in its offsite power supply and triggering the shutdown. Operators placed the plant in a safe shutdown condition, the release says. The following day, operational errors led to a one hour loss of shutdown cooling. “The purpose of this special inspection is to better understand the circumstances surrounding the loss of shutdown cooling,” NRC Region IV Administrator Marc Dapas says. Inspectors will spend about a week at the site. A report documenting their finding will be available 45 days after the inspection.
On the line: Money managers may not agree where oil prices are headed, but they are increasingly eager to place their bets. Bloomberg reports total wagers on the price of crude climbed to the highest since the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission began tracking the data in 2006. Speculators’ combined short and long positions in West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark, rose to 497,280 futures and options contracts in the week ended Feb. 2. WTI moved more than 1% each day in the past three weeks. U.S. crude stockpiles climbed to the highest level in more than 85 years, and Venezuela called for cooperation between OPEC and other oil-exporting countries to stem the protracted drop in prices. Read the full story.
