US stock market closes lower amid rising volatility

By Ovunc Kutlu

ANKARA (AA) - The US stock market closed lower Monday amid rising volatility, while all three indices posted major losses.

The Dow Jones dove 323 points, or 0.94%, to 34,002, while the S&P 500 was down 56 points, or 1.3%, to 4,300.

The Nasdaq plummeted 311 points, or 2.1%, to 14,255.

Facebook's stock price was down 5.25% to $325 shortly before the closing bell, while it slightly recovered to $326.23 at the final bell to finish the day with a 4.9% loss.

In limited after-hours trading, Facebook's stock price again dived below $326 per share, while the company's market value lost around $50 billion in a single day amid Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp all saw massive outages globally.

Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg saw his net worth decline around $6 billion on Monday, according to the latest data on Forbes' Real-Time Billionaires List, where he stands at 6th place.

The losses in US stock exchanges came amid rising uncertainty in the global markets.

The VIX volatility index soared 8.6% to 22.96, and the yield on 10-year US Treasury notes rose 1% to 1.482%.

The dollar index, on the other hand, fell 0.24% to 93.81.

Precious metals have continued their increase, with gold adding 0.4% to $1,768 per ounce and silver rising 0.5% to $22.65 an ounce.

Oil prices were up, around their three-year highs once again, more than a 2.5% gain. Brent crude was trading at $81.28 per barrel and the US benchmark West Texas Intermediate was at $77.62.

OPEC and its allies, the group dubbed OPEC+, agreed earlier to raise their oil production by 400,000 barrels per day in November.

The decision is part of the group's existing plan that aims to gradually phase out its production cuts that were implemented during the pandemic when global oil demand had steeply declined.