Market check: Stocks accelerate losses, Dow falls by 700+ points

Yahoo Finance's Akiko Fujita and Brian Cheung give a check of the markets as stocks extend losses.

Video transcript

BRIAN CHEUNG: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance again. A market sell-off in progress on Wall Street right now. Red across the board, with the Dow Jones down 2.3%. NASDAQ and the S&P 500 down about 3%. But, Akiko, what's really interesting is, this all appears to be on the back of one company reporting earnings this morning, and of course, that was Target.

AKIKO FUJITA: Well, and you could argue some of the concerns that we've seen from investors today carried over from what we heard from Walmart yesterday. Because we saw the two big-name retailers-- Walmart yesterday, Target today. And of course, Target a big miss. But really, the concern here is about the higher cost eating into profits there. And we've seen Target down more than 24% today.

BRIAN CHEUNG: Yeah. I mean, look, a very precipitous drop. I think the statistic is that, if it holds on to this level again, there's still about four hours of trading. It would be the worst day for Target since Black Monday in the 1980s. Certainly not a comparison you ever want to see. But again, what's so interesting about the market action that we're seeing so far is it's affecting so many other retail companies, as well, that don't have any news breaking.

When you take a look at BJ's Wholesale Club down 16%. Costco down 11%. Dick's Sporting Goods, Dollar Tree, Dollar General all down over 10%. I mean, it's hard to see any real positive movers, except for maybe AMC, which is up 4% for some reason.

AKIKO FUJITA: And you know, in some ways, Brian, when you think back to the big swings that we've seen over the last few weeks, it is that, right? It's one company reports something that's already a concern, and then you see the sector getting dragged down alongside it. Today we're talking about retail. Last week we were talking about tech, we were talking about streaming. And so, to your point, even though a name like a Costco is not reporting-- putting out any news today, it is that very concern that's being highlighted by the biggest-name retailer.

BRIAN CHEUNG: Yeah. And it speaks to how macro the picture is, right? Because there will be no reason for all of these other stocks to be trading down like this if it wasn't for the fact that there is something happening to the American consumer that is going to be a negative risk to all of these other companies as well. Now, I'm actually very interested in Dollar Tree and Dollar General, because we were kind of touching on this in our conversation about TJ Maxx. But in theory, discount retailers might be possible beneficiaries of some of this if the inflationary pressures are incentivizing some consumers to say, you know what, I could go to Target today to go pick up certain things, but maybe I'll go to the discount retailers instead.

So I wonder if there's kind of just a little bit of an overreaction in some of these discount stocks. But again, when you do see some of the biggest movers today are all the discount stocks, I think maybe it shows that there's just consternation about the consumer bearing down on almost all fronts.

AKIKO FUJITA: Well, and let's pull up TJ Maxx here, because-- or TJX, I should say, because that is the biggest mover, at least in the S&P 500 today. So it is seeing big upside on the back of that. You see up about more than 8%. So, you know, TJX is out-- or up today more than 8% on the back of their results. That hasn't necessarily led to a pop in other discount retailers too, so it's hard to make any kind of correlation.

BRIAN CHEUNG: Yeah. Well, I guess we could say that today, through all the bloodbath, I guess the good successful trade is the TJX trade. But of course, don't make too much out of intraday movements. Everything could change by 4:00 PM today.