LIVE MARKETS-The bungee jump stock market

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THE BUNGEE JUMP STOCK MARKET

Wall Street took a swan dive early Tuesday, only to stage yet another bounce-back, reclaiming much of the altitude it initially lost, and then dipping again as the closing bell approached.

In what has become the U.S. stock market's modus operandi in many recent days, all three major U.S. stock indexes plummeted more than 2% straight after the opening bell, evoking words like "plunged" and "tanked" and "tumbled." Those descriptors had to be softened to "dipped," "weakened" and "slipped" as the session wore on.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 403.51 points, or 0.83%, to 48,501.27, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 64.99 points, or 0.94%, to 6,816.63 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC lost 232.17 points, or 1.02%, to 22,516.69.

By mid-session, the S&P 500 looked as if it might avoid closing below its 100-day moving average, but it didn't. The bellwether index ended below that support level for the first time since November 20.

Small-caps .RUT fared worse than their larger-cap peers, falling 1.8% on the day.

Even so, the selloff remained broad, with glimpses of green the exception to the rule.

Chips .SOX, materials .SPLRCM and aerospace/defense stocks .SPCOMAED were among the day's underperformers, with software & services .SPLRCIS emerging as the day's clear winner.

Front-month crude, both WTI CLc1 and Brent LCOc1 settled up around 4.7%, well below the 8%-plus surge earlier in the session, which pushed the commodity to multi-year highs.

The risk-off sentiment is, of course, being attributed to the widening conflict in the Middle East, which has reignited inflation fears.

All was quiet on the economic front. But data is on tap for Wednesday, including ISM and S&P Global services PMI, weekly mortgage demand, and payrolls processor ADP's national employment index, which is expected to show the U.S. economy added 50,000 private sector jobs in February.

Here's your closing snapshot:

(Stephen Culp)

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