Dow’s big drop after a record close is fairly rare. How doubts about December rate cut are weighing on Wall Street.

Stocks were swept up in a broad-based selloff on Thursday. - AFP via Getty Images

It was an unusually rough day on Wall Street.

Major U.S. equity indexes, including the S&P 500 index, Nasdaq Composite Index, Dow Jones Industrial Average and Russell 2000 index, all tallied their worst percentage-point declines since Oct. 10 on Thursday, Dow Jones Market Data showed.

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The Dow DJIA dropped nearly 800 points, or 1.7%, to close at 47,457.22, while the S&P 500 SPX fell 113.43 points, or 1.7%, to end at 6,737.49. The Nasdaq Composite COMP declined 536.10 points, or 2.3%, to finish at 22,870.36. The Russell 2000 RUT fell 67.81 points, or 2.8%, to end at 2,382.98.

A confluence of factors contributed to the selling, Wall Street strategists said, but shifting views about the Federal Reserve’s plans for interest-rate cuts appeared to be chief among them.

Market-based expectations that the central bank would lower interest rates in December for the third time this year briefly fell below 50% on Thursday, before recovering to a coin toss, according to CME Group data. That was down from almost 63% a day before.

The decline was triggered by commentary from senior Fed officials, who stressed that inflation remained sticky, while the broader economy appeared to be holding up.

The impact appeared to ripple out across markets, provoking a decline in prices of stocks and bonds. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note BX:TMUBMUSD10Y rose 3.2 basis points to 4.111%, based on levels as of 3 p.m. Eastern, Dow Jones Market Data showed. Bond yields move inversely with prices, rising as prices fall.

“We may see a Fed that is more on the sidelines in the months ahead and that is exacerbating the selloff today,” said Mona Mahajan, head of investment strategy at Edward Jones, during an interview with MarketWatch.

Earlier in the week, a rotation trade appeared to be taking shape, which helped lift the Dow, even as the Nasdaq continued to struggle. But that rotation appeared to give way to a broader selloff on Thursday, one that even impacted value stocks, including members of the S&P 500 healthcare sector. Healthcare remains the index’s top-performing sector in November, with a gain of nearly 6%, FactSet data showed.

The Nasdaq Composite has continued to struggle, as some members of the so-called Magnificent Seven — including Meta Platforms Inc. META and Tesla Inc .TSLA — have now slumped into correction territory, defined as a drop of 10% or more from a recent high. Nvidia Corp. NVDA, the most valuable publicly traded U.S. company, was down nearly 10% from its Oct. 29 record finish.

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The Nasdaq has fallen by 3.6% over the past two weeks, leaving it on track for its biggest two-week drop since April 4, Dow Jones Market Data showed.

Enthusiasm about the end of the longest government shutdown on record did little to lift investors’ spirits, as a rally that had boosted the Dow to its first finish above 48,000 on Wednesday suddenly broke. Jose Torres, an economist at Interactive Brokers, described it as a “buy the rumors, sell the news” reaction, a phrase often used to describe a decline that occurs after an expected event or development has passed.

Related:Stocks surge on hopes for an end to the government shutdown. Why the reopening could get tricky.

Large declines for the Dow one day after a record close are relatively rare. The Dow’s 1.7% drop on Thursday was the 22nd-largest following a record finish in the history of the index, which stretches back to the late 19th century, according to Dow Jones Market Data. It was also only the 10th time in the past 20 years that the index has fallen by 1% or more the day after a record close.

Meanwhile, ongoing delays of economic data has helped to fray investors’ nerves. With the longest shutdown in history now over, concerns about the economic fallout have returned to the fore.

“We need the numbers,” said Peter Cardillo, chief markets economist at Spartan Capital Securities. “I suspect most of the macro news is not going to be that strong and indicate the economy actually weakened.”

While shares of the biggest companies have struggled recently, pressure on more high-flying speculative stocks has continued to intensify. Many of these popular momentum trades came under pressure again on Thursday, contributing to the Russell 2000’s decline, which was the largest among major indexes.

Shares of hot quantum-computing stock Rigetti Computing Inc. RGTI were off by 11% on Thursday, bring its decline since the start of November to 43%. At least one of the biggest losers on the Russell 2000 on Thursday was a biotech stock, Korro Bio Inc. KRRO. Biotech names had recently trended higher.

Many of these smaller, more speculative names have been popular with individual investors this year, according to Nomura’s Charlie McElligott, raising the prospect of a negative wealth effect that could hurt the broader economy.

The momentum unwind wasn’t confined to stocks; bitcoin BTCUSD also fell below $100,000 to its lowest price since May.

—Joy Wiltermuth, Abhirami Shrinivas and Mike DeStefano contributed

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